My computer gave away my secretsA good friend recently found out his girlfriend was pregnant when google autocomplete came up with 'symptoms of pregnancy'...
Has your googling been your undoing? Has someone found your gay porn stash? Have you had a Gary Glitter moment in PC World? Tell us how your computer has ratted on you.
(
chthonic, Fri 10 Feb 2006, 10:58)
« Go Back
Guide to completely safe surfingAs an IT professional, let me offer some advice on completely guilt-free browsing.
First, download this:
www.vmware.com/download/player/
This is free software which allows you to run a 'virtual computer' inside your own computer. You can get it for Windows or Linux (sorry Mac users, I guess you're all too counter-culture or something).
Then download this:
www.vmware.com/vmtn/vm/browserapp.html
This is a specially optimised version of Linux for COMPLETELY secure browsing. As it's Linux, no Virus, Trojan or other nasty will infect you. As it's a virtual machine, even in the unlikely event something did get on there, it'd never touch your real machine.
There's a very good 'Getting started guide' at www.vmware.com/pdf/bavm_getting_started_100.pdf Take special note of the paragraph at the top of page 4. Doing this will mean that no history of your browsing would ever be saved, as the virtual machine is refreshed every time it is run. This is the way (good) internet cafes work to stop dodgy browsing on a machine from affecting the next person's session.
If you need to save any files, btw, I recommend a USB flash drive. Just virus check it when you've finished with the virtual machine, then deal with it however you want on your normal machine. Maybe burning the contents to CD/DVD and hiding it with your regular jazz mags.
This was a public service announcement. And I didn't even charge a consultancy fee! The fun thing is that VMWare is owned by a massive billion-dollar corporation, and they're actively encouraging your dirty little habits.
(, Sat 11 Feb 2006, 22:20, Reply)
« Go Back