Are you always connected to internet?

EightK said:

Are there any risks in doing so?

Your PC is behind your router's firewall, so there should be little or no risk....

I prefer not to, but I have sometimes inadvertently left it connected unattended for over 30 mins and maybe beyond an hour.

I have one machine I leave running 24/7, and that's connected to the internet all the time. Nothing bad has happened to it yet.

Now leaving the browser open at some less savoury websites could pose a risk, but just being connected to the internet - no, I don't think so.

EightK said:

Are there any utilities to dis-engage from the internet if there's no activity for over 5 minutes?

Windows frequently checks a particular web address to check whether or not it has an internet connection and it uses the result to set the internet-connected icon you see in your Taskbar's 'Notification area' / 'System tray'.

Various applications can also do similar checks. The common settings for modern versions of MS Office Outlook, just for example, make it check the connection quite often.

So there's never "no activity". You could search online for a utility that will work despite these background checks but, as the others have said, there is no particular reason to be worried about staying online as long as you are connected through a router / modem and do not have old out-of-support applications running [such as IE or MS Office Outlook 2007].

All the best,
Denis

EightK said:

I assume most, if not all, of you here are happy to (or currently doing so) keep your PC always connected to the internet? Are there any risks in doing so?

No, the Internet is off here when we're not using it since ever. Ethernet-shortcut on the desktop is our switch to close it.

It is less about paranoia or the risks and more about closing all open ports.

Just to play with, we also have a cloned MAC address app (technitium) and we change it frequently. This operation re-enables IPv6 each time.

Plus, we are not using wifi: Disabled in the BIOS and the router. At the end of the day, we turn off the modem and the router.

I only disconnect to edit passwords kept on an encrypted USB drive

retexan599 said:

I have presumed that my desktop is disconnected from the internet (i.e., from my router) when I put the desktop in Sleep mode. Not sure if this is true or not?

If you are using 'proper' sleep [S3 Sleep] then Yes.
But if your computer uses S0 Modern standby then maybe Yes, maybe No. It needs to be checked. People often loosely refer to it as sleep but it is not.

If your computer is not capable of using S0 Modern standby then there is no uncertainty so run the command

Code:

powercfg -a

and, if yours does not support S0, then the matter is settled.

S0 is a glorified idle condition and one of my computers is cursed with it.

Denis