well, thanks everyone for the very very rapid replies :-)
i have scanned my ports with nmap and only canna (Japanese server is open to localhost).
Looney Genius, Steve Gibson's www.grc.com says I am running in full stealth mode on everything but
113 IDENT Closed Your computer has responded that this port exists but is currently closed to connections.
I guess what interests me is that the previous SUSE firewall I was using did not report any of my recent notices, but since upgrading, everytime I go online, I get a few firewall messages.
joss