does using xampp open my computer to outside ?

[pratto]

hello -
i have watched a number of tutorials about xampp, and have installed it and have used it to to begin to learn PHP. but one thing that makes me nervous is that, the videos say that using xampp can open port 80 to the outside world.

i un-plug my router when i want to work on PHP in xampp, and xampp works fine (i can see what my coding is doing using localhost), but i want to know if this is necessary.

[JJ_Tagy]

Xampp doesn't open anything. That's up to you and your router/firewall.

[pratto]

thanks for that. i guess i am one of those people that spook easily. and i don't have a solid grasp of how the outside world & my router communicate.
can i assume that, even if i have xampp running (in house only), that is is still safe to open another browser window and go to websites as i normally do ?

[Altrea]

Hi pratto,

can i assume that, even if i have xampp running (in house only), that is is still safe to open another browser window and go to websites as i normally do ?

It depends on your browser and its patch level how secure you can surf, but relating to XAMPP it is completely independend, because your browser uses other/random ports to communicate to the outside. for example, your http request will be send to a webservers port 80 but get the way back to the port you send it from (for example port 13172).

best wishes,
Altrea