Winword.exe connecting to the internet

[Amethyst]

Hello,

I take a peek at my log file every so often, and I've noticed that winword.exe is connecting to outside IP addresses. There are several different addresses in different locales. I use MS Word and sometimes I copy and paste news stories from the internet into MS word documents. When I do so, I sometimes see an IP address show up at the bottom of the screen, and I assume that's the IP address of the web page I'm copying the material from. Sometimes links and graphics (photo's) get copied and pasted into the word document as well.

I am wondering, though, if winword should be allowed to connect to the internet. OP has the rules for this application set up as follows:

Where the Protocol is TCP
and Remote Port is HTTP-83
and Direction is Outbound
Allow It


Where the Protocol is UDP
and Remote Address is <HOST_MACRO_DNS_SERVERS>
and Remote Port is DOMAIN
Allow It


Where the Protocol is TCP
and Remote Port is HTTPS
and Direction is Outbound
Allow It

I didn't set these rules up, nor do I recall being asked. The rules are in blue, so it looks like these are OP default rules. Should I allow this or not? I don't see why winword.exe even needs to connect to the internet at all, quite frankly, although I think something needs to be permitted in order for the office assistant to work. (I remember years ago with Zonealarm I didn't allow something and then the little assistant wouldn't function.) Would my copying and pasting from web pages be doing this? I guess I should just try typing a plain text dcoument and seeing what happens.

Update: Well, I can't delete, so I'll just edit. I just did a little experiment, and it does look like this occurs when I copy and paste stuff from web pages to a word document, but it does not occur if I'm just typing a text document. I would say this is probably normal behavior.