Does "opening ports" make your pc easier to get hacked?

[fidel]

i was reading a tutorial about how to make torrents faster, the thing is, it said something about opening my ports and forwarding these ports to my router to make "outside sources easier to access them".

dosent this make your computer easier to hack?

[glc]

Certainly. It's the chance you have to take when you want to do things like this.

[fidel]

do you have any open ports on your computer?

[perkster]

i opened a few on mine specifically for DCC transfer on Mirc, if you have a good firewall and only open ports in a range you need (dont open a big range) then you should be ok. i opened 10 ports i think, and told IRC to use those ports for DCC only.