Keep your MySpace and Internet Surfing Activity Private from Parents/Bosses/Wives/Friends/Kids whoever
After reading at Wired.com the latest article on MySpace and the growing trend of big media websites covering the MySpace world in more detail I thought it prudent to write a guide on how to protect your online activity from “the powers that be” or “the man” if you prefer.
In recent weeks newspapers from the San Francisco Chronicle to the Rutland Herald have pressed out stories — often on the front page — with headlines like “Online Danger Zone” and “The Trouble With MySpace.” An NBC Dateline show in January colored MySpace “a cyber secret teenagers keep from tech-challenged parents.”
This guide is directed at keeping your MySpace activity hidden from prying eyes. The main focus behind this guide is to make sure that your activity, and effort to hide your activity goes completely unnoticed. Maintaining an appearance of normal activity is key so if someone does start watching you, or does try to investigate your online activity “locally” (meaning they access your computer) then no alarm bells will sound.
This guide will describe simple yet effective methods for hiding any web browsing or related PC activity from someone who has local access to your computer. This advice can be applied to any online activity you’d like to conduct, and is in NO WAY a specific instruction to do illegal or harmful things online…just things you’d like to keep private. This advice is for educational use only, apply as directed, all rights reserved, no returns or refunds for lost or stolen merchandise, if rash results consult doctor immediattly.
1. The first rule of MySpace, there is no MySpace. The very first rule that you must follow in order to keep your MySpace privacy in tact is to keep your MySpace identity secret from anyone in “real” life that doesn’t NEED TO KNOW your nickname. If it’s our parents, husband, wife, boyfriend, brother son daughter etc. that you’re hiding your account from then make sure they can’t find your alias from someone else. If they know your nick then all efforts to ide your activity from them will fail (but obviously you can still keep your surfing activities private)
2. Use a different browser than the primary one on your PC. Regardless if you use your PC or share a PC with your friends/family, you should not use Internet Explorer or whatever the primary browser is to do your private activities. Yes IE, Nutscrape and Firefox all have the ability to clean the cache, history and private data but the goal is to not make it obvious that you have something to hide. The more obscure the browser the better, Firefox is better than IE, Opera is better than Firefox, Flock is better than Opera..and so on. Make sure to install this browser somewhere not obvious (C:\Program Files\System32 is always good and stealthy), and also make sure there are no shortcuts to it in the start menu, quick launch or desktop. Install it to a folder named “System32″ or something very plain and generic, so a more tech savvy snoop isn’t likely to notice it. Keep in mind that this new browser install will still be accessible in the Add/Remove Programs interface (and elsewhere) so it’s not perfect (for the next level of tin foilness you could use a browser/OS that’s loaded on a thumb drive, but I’ll leave that for the next guide)
3. When surfing with this other browser, make sure to have all history removed when you exit. Firefox is a good example, if you go to Tools>Clear Private Data, bam! all the data from your last session will go bye bye. Make sure it kills everything, open the browser back up and try to find something, check auto-complete, check history, and check the cache, make sure everything is in fact gone. Even better to to configure this browser to not even store that data in the first place. Change the history days to 0, the cache to 0, no saving form data etc. that way if you forget or get lazy next time the browser is open it won’t have any history data available.
4. Leave the home page of the browser you install the same as default. Don’t change it to your MySpace account page, or favorite band’s home page, just leave whatever the default is. That way, if someone does find and run your browser it will seem like a default install that’s never been used (which will allow you to deny deny deny).
5. Don’t bookmark anything. Use http://del.icio.us/ for your bookmarks if you have a lot but don’t store them in the browser. This makes it easy to track your activity and also leaves evidence that you were using that browser. If you can get away with not using del.icio.us at all and rely on your memory than even better.
6. Don’t download anything to your PC and leave it there (or better don’t download anything at all). Make sure all temporary and completed downloads are deleted when you end your session. Save everything to your desktop or 1 folder everytime and when you go to delete use Shift+Delete so it bypasses your Recycling Bin. If you need to keep something, take out an account with a free file storage company, or for images use a service like http://www.flickr.com. This is not only more secure as it leaves less to be found on your PC but is also more convenient for you as you can access your files and data on any computer.
7. Use an anonymous email address for your MySpace identity that doesn’t contain your name or an easy to guess nickname, but also maintain an email address for friends/family/boss that is public. Something like 1hHoiehfffU@yahoo.com will work, although not easy to remember this protects you from someone making the connection with your real offline identity. Also don’t store old email, delete what you don’t have to keep, this leaves less evidence if someone does gain access to your account.
8. Make sure to do all PUBLIC surfing on the net using the regular default browser that everyone uses. You need real consistent, regular, non-hidden traffic in IE to make it seem like you’re using your computer normally. Research for your next paper, maintain a public email address, shop for new clothes, and play games as normal with IE and not with your “private” browser.
9. If possible use public computer terminals. If you don’t want to do any private work on your PC or shared home PC, use a public Library or Cyber Cafe. Each place tends to keep traffic data so you can’t monkey around too much, but it at least removes all data from your home PC (for Cyber Cafes pay in cash and for Library PC’s try to load an OS from a USB drive or CD-ROM)
10. Use a removable drive to load a temporary OS or browser. I mentioned it above, but to increase your local security even more, you can use a browser or complete OS on a thumb drive or CD, which will make all data completely temporary and secure (assuming you can secure and hide data on the external drive). Complete write up to follow in the next privacy guide, but here’s a good start on the subject for now.
11. If you need to chat to your online friends use another IM than the default. This advice is the exact same as for the browser, if you need to keep your conversations private than use another IM. If you use AOL/MSN/ or ICQ on your PC, install Trillian in an obscure directory and use ICQ’s Secure IM feature. Using Trillian/ICQ in secure mode will not only nuke the logs of the conversations you have but it will also secure the text going back and forth with whomever you are chatting with to protect you upstream as well from snoopers. For further security load Portable GAIM, which allows you to run AOL/ICQ/MSN/Yahoo (and more) connections just like Trillian but with no install (and it can run on a secured USB drive)
12. Make sure your snooper hasn’t installed any “snooping” software. Familiarize yourself with the services that run on your computer (Ctrl+Alt+Delete it’s called Task Manager, look at Processes) and also what’s available commercially for snooping software. If you don’t recognize something that is running, Google the file name and see what comes up. If you think you’re being watched you need to crank up the security by either loading another OS from a boot device (see #11) or run emulation software to emulate another OS like WMware Player (this will work around most snooping software). Also you should install softare like AdAware and SpyBot Search & Destroy to find possible snoopware, this won’t look suspicious as you should have an anti-spyware application installed anyway.
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As you can see I didn’t cover much specific to MySpace as the advice can be applied to any online activity. Also, all the above techniques can be 1 upped by a more tech savvy and bored snooper so if you’re dad works at Google or your mom teach CS 101 then you’re probably screwed.
This guide of course doesn’t address upstream snooping by ISP/Network Admin/Government but that will be explained in the next guide as it’s a little more complex and won’t apply to most users and may require custom software.
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