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I ran netstat on my computer, and one thing that came up was msnbot-65-52-108-216. I did some research and what came up was that it's from an IP originating in Redmond, Washington and that it's likely Microsoft Bing bot or something like that. Does that mean Microsoft is using my computer as part of a botnet for Bing or something? What might that network be doing, and if my computer is being used in that botnet is there a way to disconnect myself from it?

My computer is running windows, and it's not hosting a server....

HashHazard
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Mr. Chameleon
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  • Microsoft might be reusing servers for something else. Try figuring out which program is connected to that IP first and on what port. You can use [TcpView](https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/tcpview.aspx) for that. – kichik Oct 23 '16 at 18:09

1 Answers1

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As answered here, this IP address is in legitimate Microsoft IP space, and the msnbot process appears to be related to fetching Windows/Bing search results for the search functions integrated into Windows.

Such processed are only called "bot" because search engine crawlers are often called "-bot" (GoogleBot, etc.)

Royce Williams
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