What is port 16771 commonly used for?

Angilion · 12 May 2009 at 23:33

Out of curiosity, I had a look at the privacy tests at privacy.net. They told me that ports 80 and 16771 are open for outbound traffic. I know that 80 is the standard web browser port, but what is 16771 commonly used for?

Aod · 12 May 2009 at 23:36

as far as i can remember, Port 16771 is not registered or in common use for any application.

it might be being used by iPlayer or something like that? bit-torrent program perhaps?

tolien · 12 May 2009 at 23:37

It's non-root, so it could be anything. Probably a torrent/P2P client though.

Angilion · 12 May 2009 at 23:37

At the time, the only browser window I had open was for privacy.net. Which, annoyingly, tests ports 80 and 16771 but doesn't say why.

Angilion · 12 May 2009 at 23:39

tolien said:
It's non-root, so it could be anything. Probably a torrent/P2P client though.

I'm not using either of those. Curious. It's apparently standard enough for privacy.net to check it, but why?

Tui · 13 May 2009 at 18:19

Google search gives this port as being used by Spectorsoft's spyware products to connect to their servers.

tolien · 13 May 2009 at 18:19

Angilion said:
I'm not using either of those. Curious. It's apparently standard enough for privacy.net to check it, but why?

Did it check it specifically, or everything between 0 and 65535?

Angilion · 13 May 2009 at 23:17

tolien said:
Did it check it specifically, or everything between 0 and 65535?

It checked it specifically.

From the list on the site of what the test do:

-Checks to see if port 80 and 16771 are open to see if your browser shows images and if you have a firewall blocking traffic on port 16771.

Angilion · 13 May 2009 at 23:18

Tui said:
Google search gives this port as being used by Spectorsoft's spyware products to connect to their servers.

Not for me - I use Spybot and Ad-aware.

Dist · 14 May 2009 at 13:44

can you not simply run cmd.exe with admin privs and do a netstat -b? netstat will show all currently inbound or outbound connections, and the -b will show what process is doing it, that should give you a good indication of what is causing it. Just look for the connection that is using port 16771, and check what process is using it.