5 Simple Safety Tips to follow when using Public Computers

I know a lot of people who don’t have computers at home, but still go to the nearest cyber cafe to get things done online. However, these public computers, very so often, are highly infected with malicious programs. You’re actually putting your data and online accounts at high risk when you’re accessing them via a cyber cafe.

Keep the following tips in mind so that the next time you’re accessing the internet via a public centre, you can be more safe.

Avoid Keyloggers

Besides being a host to viruses and trojans, public computers are also homes to keyloggers - programs that monitor every keystroke you press, and probably even take screenshots and transmit them to hackers. Remember: every key that you press is being logged, so how do you prevent this from happening?

Thanks to Technospot.net, there’s a simple trick that can be used to efficiently fool keyloggers. What you have to do is this: enter a few characters in the passwords box, select them with your cursor, type the first letter of your real password. You repeat the first two steps, and then press the second letter.



Use an alternative Browser



Avoid using Internet Explorer. Use an alternative browser. IE is more prone to malicious attacks than Firefox or Opera. If the computer you’re using has a browser other than IE installed, don’t forget to use it.

You can also get a portable version of Firefox (only a few computers have USB ports, so this might be useless sometimes) that runs from your portable disk. You can carry the customized version wherever you go.

Link: http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable



Don’t store login information


When the browser asks you whether you want the passwords to be saved, immediately ignore. You don’t want your account to be accessible by others, do you?


Clear Cookies & History, Log Off


Make sure you log off from all your online accounts before you leave the system. If you don’t sign out, any body else could misuse your account. Never forget to sign out.

Also, if you downloaded any important documents while browsing make sure you delete them as well.