A question regarding the safety of server hosting...

[TheJoseph07]

Can one of the EQEmu Forefathers please answer my question: From the information we post onto the EQEmu channel through server hosting, does this type of uploading allow other users to access your PERSONAL computer information, such as programs and web files? I beleive from what I can tell it has no connection but I have to be sure: AM I SAFE from hacking, viruses, affliated scum, ect when I host an Everquest Emulator Server in MS DOS Command Promt via World.exe and Boot5zones.exe?

Basically someone is having insecurity in my using their computer and they have this question to ask:
If this computer is hosting an EMu Server, can ANYONE or ANYTHING access their computer or change anything AT ALL?

[Highwind2]

You are never 100% safe from hacking no matter what you do. But, correct me if im wrong, no, they cant. I somehow doubt it would be used this much if it could be.

[RangerDown]

IIRC, when I first ran the world server I did so under the guest account, and it worked okay. When in doubt, run under the guest account.

And that's really good advice for any unknown executables. Several times I've run programs under the guest account because I wasn't 100% sure what the program did, and the guest account has very limited privileges which limits the damage the program could do if it had any kind of trojan in it.

*Edit* no I'm not suggesting the Emu server has a trojan in it. But I'm trying to say that if there WAS a vulnerability in the code that somebody could exploit, if the most damage they could do is whatever guest can do... which is... practically nil.