Safety suggestions for using public computers

If you use public computers, whether in our Library or another library, school, internet café, or any public venue, there are some precautions that you can take to safeguard your personal information. The suggestions listed below, written by Neil J. Rubenking, are from the December 4, 2007 issue of PC Magazine (p. 115).

It may not always be possible to follow all these steps because public PCs often have some or all of these activities locked down to prevent tampering and maintain uniformity and stability among all workstations. You can always ask about the settings on Public PCs to determine whether tasks like these are being done for you. Here at the Library, many of these options are not available, but we use IE Privacy Keeper software, which automatically cleans up browser history once you are done surfing the net.

Rubenking’s suggestions from PC Magazine:

Before you start, turn off dangerous browser settings. In Internet Explorer’s Options dialog click the Content tab, click the Settings button in the AutoComplete pane and uncheck all the boxes. In Firefox’s Options dialog click the Privacy tab and uncheck all the boxes under History and Cookies, then click the Security tab and uncheck all the boxes under Passwords.

Be careful not to visit any financial Web sites by clicking hyperlinks received in your Web-based e-mail. The sites they bring you to might be fraudulent, and the public computer may not have antiphishing software enabled. If you need to visit a bank or other financial Web site, type the URL yourself.

Before entering any sensitive data on the public computer, make sure there’s no active malicious software on the system by running a quick scan from www.nanoscan.com. Keep in mind that no software will detect a hardware keylogger, so limit your sensitive transactions to those that are utterly essential.

When you’re finished with the browser, erase your tracks. In Firefox, press Ctrl-Shift-Del and check all the boxes, then click OK. In IE select Delete Browsing History from the Tools menu and click Delete all.

When you are all done, launch My Computer, right-click the icon for the hard disk, and click Properties. Click the Disk Cleanup button and wait for the list of choices. Make sure that Recycle Bin and Temporary Files are checked and that Compress old files is not checked. Then click OK to clean up.

- JB