Okay the page name is bad. Anyway, some applications are written to report back data on the user or contact web sites at ever boot or close. Some users understandably object to this. Such behavior can be mitigated by the proper use of a firewall. As far as I know, BeOS does not have firewall software available yet.
Control over ports or general access (or even visibility) of hardware from programs could be controlled by the user through the operating system. For example, one could say that a program would not be allowed to connect to a specific site. Or, one could say that a program would only be able to connect to a particular site, or through a particular port. Going even further one could say that a program should not be told of the existence of the network connection!
Such a mechanism could be used to create a sandbox for untrusted applications. One would create such a sandbox by hiding hard disks, network cards, printers, until the minimal set was achieved in which the program could run.
