# Dubious Network Scanners

If you click on the "Scan Now" link at [this website][1], you get
some HTML output of a simple portscan conducted against your
connecting IP address (at least, the IP that makes the connection to
Sygate's web server).

The scan seems to be just a simple nmap scan that say things like
"SMTP is used to send email across the internet. This allows an
attacker to verify user accounts on your system, send anonymous
(spam) email, or even access files on your hard drive".

Of course, the company offering this "service" is selling personal
firewalls, so this kind of alarmist nonsense doesn't surprise
me. Interestingly, those using a SOCKS proxy, [tor][2], or some
other kind of internet anonymizer will actually scan the last hop's
source IP address that made the connection to Sygate's web server.

[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20060718015634/http://scan.sygate.com/prestealthscan.html
[2]: http://tor.eff.org/
.