hi,
> I feel portscanning is a bit like snooping around someones house: When do
> its inhabitants come and go, are there any unsecured windows, open doors,
> backdoors and the like. Maybe such behaviour is not illegal but certainly
> undesirable and if it happens it makes me feel uneasy. Of course I don't
> leave the house without locking it but still I think the world would be
> a better place when I wouldn't have to do it.
We might want to distinguish between port scanning and port probing. Port
scanning is merely *noticing* that there are doors and windows (as if you
didn't know before that a house has at least one door and some windows),
but probing is trying the door knob. I could tell you that my webserver is
at port 80 and there is a mailserver waiting on 25 for incoming mails,
but what have you gained from this knowledge?
I can fully understand your uneasiness, however, prohibiting port scans
just makes other people more suspicious -- as if you'd have something to
hide ("hey, there is a secret back door in my garden, which is unlocked.
You can enter the house without a key, but pssst .. don't tell anyone").
I agree that port scans are annoying, because it costs bandwidth which
someone has to pay and which could be used otherwise more efficiently.
The initiator might even have malicious intentions, but why being afraid
of your neighbours looking at your house?
-daniel
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