Five Ways to Stay Secure on a Public Computer
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Information security is one of the big up and comings in the technology world. With medical records going digitial — staying safe on the internet is going to be a huge deal. Google’s new “Google Health” is an iffy concept that I am not too thrilled about; however that is for another day. I use public computers on a daily basis at school. Even though the computers are set to clear the browsing history as soon as I close the browser, it still is not good enough for me. Here are five ways to stay secure while using a public computer.
- Buy a flashdrive and use Portable Firefox. It allows you to run an instance of Firefox from your usb key, so you take the browsing history with you. It also allows you to take your bookmarks, extensions and passwords with you.
- You never know when a public computer is running a key logger (intentionally or not). A password manager like Roboform is a great idea. There is a portable version for your usb key that works wonders. Plug it in and you are ready to go. Just type in your “master” password, and every other password is just a click away.
- If the computer you are on does not automatically clear the browsing history, make sure you do it yourself before leaving. Clear the cache (if you can), or run ATF Cleaner from a usb key.
- Pick passwords that are not common. Use a combination of capital letters, numbers, symbols and anything inbetween. Roboform (see number 2) has a built in password generator that works wonders.
- Bring a laptop to school/public places. If you are using your technology, you know your information is safe (as long as you are connected on an encrypted network).
Are you getting the hint? Buy a USB key or bring your own computer — that is the best way to stay secure. The only information that is guaranateed to be secure is the information that you carry with you and protect.
Justin Capasso
2 Comments
Omarra Byrd
June 7th, 2008
at 1:58pm
RoboForm is an absolutely great mention of software to stifle keyloggers. That is one of the reasons why I actually love the RoboForm software myself. I use it all of the time and it takes all the menial everyday tasks that I have to perform on my computer daily and shortens them extremely! What once took me fifteen minutes to complete now takes me only one second because RoboForm does the same task with just one click. In fact I wrote a Report about a lot of RoboForm’s capabilities for use that aren’t even touched on in the User’s Manual for RoboForm. You can get that Report here:
http://www.booksbonkers.com/TheRoboFormReport!.html
Arthur Coleman
June 13th, 2008
at 6:38am
If you really want a secure drive for the purposes you mention, then you need to look at the IronKey Personal at http://www.ironkey.com.
It uses military-grade hardware encryption to protect data. It has on-board portable Firefox, but then adds a Secure Sessions service on top that lets you browse anonymously on the web (it uses it’s own private TOR network that also provides anti-pharming protection and prevents DNS spoofing attacks).
It also has a built-in password manager to avoid the keylogging attack you discuss. I like Roboforms, too, but it’s nice when the software comes built into the key.
Lastly, it writes all temp files to the IronKey and erases them when you lock the drive.
Frankly, you actually wrote the spec for the device, so you might as well buy one.