Thank you so much for bringing this up, nickster_uk. I too was astonished at all those unsolicited connections when I bought a laptop with win8 and I do block ALL of them via ESET firewall. From time to time I see background activity (mouse cursor flashes) and I have to check everything again... I found your post when trying to find a safe way to disable dasHost.exe. I know that feeling... it seems we're being used and watched all the time. I just found a creepy setting in win8.1 that is turned on by default: "Show text sugestions based on what I type and write on this PC"