OS: Windows 7 Pro x64 - I'm not sure if this happens on Windows 10. I just ran a file search in a folder that contains some very old backups. Part way through the search explorer.exe, seemingly of its own accord, attempted to connect out to the internet. After some investigation it appears the outbound connection was triggered by a shortcut to an FTP server. Windows had searched through a sub folder that contained the shortcut and this immediately triggered explorer.exe to connect out to the server. I know this is likely old news but merely highlighting an FTP shortcut or searching through a folder with an FTP shortcut in causes explorer to automatically connect to the server unless 'Enable FTP folder view' is disabled. This seems to be enabled by default on Win7. Maybe not a huge issue but It occurs to me that this could present a privacy risk. I could host an FTP server which grabs the IP of anyone connecting to it, then package the shortcut in a torrent file in an attempt to find out who's behind a seedbox for instance. Or maybe package in an innocuous zip file with other appropriate files and share on a forum. Example in my case. Shortcut name: FTP directory -DESKTOP-iMedia%20(2005-2007)-Driver-Xp- at ftp.download.packardbell.com Shortcut target: ftp://ftp.download.packardbell.com/DESKTOP/iMedia%20(2005-2007)/Driver/Xp/
