Covering Your e-Tracks

Heads-up for all you posters on what you should be doing if you aren't already doing it....

You need to do an e-sweep after yourselves whenever you log onto the internet. This will help cover your tracks and make it more difficult for spies and thieves to gain access to your information. Be sure to do this after every visit to the 'net.

Here's how you do a quick e-sweep, at least with Windows XP. Other versions of ol' Winders are similar:

1. Click on 'Tools' on your top task bar. A pop-up box will appear.

2. Click on 'Internet Options'. You'll see another pop-up box with some tabs.

3. You'll be sitting at the 'General' box. Hit 'Delete Cookies', and then hit 'Delete Files'.

4. Move down about an inch to the little white window with a number in it. This is the number of days your computer will keep information about your activity in memory. Use the scroll buttons to change your number to '0'.

5. Hit the 'Clear History' button. This will wipe your history from memory.

6. Hit the 'Apply' button.

7. Hit the 'OK' button.

Do this everytime you log onto the net. This won't get rid of everything, but it will wipe most and make it more difficult for someone to see your history and discover other information, such as passwords and bank account numbers. You definitely want to do this after filling out one of those e-Forms that want all kinds of personal info about you (I always give fake info) such as addresses, phone numbers, even SS#s that thieves can use. You can also toy around with the other tabs, such as 'Security', 'Privacy', whatever, and change those.

 

Thanks to your post, BigD, I'm now convinced I have to go deeper than just having a firewall installed and covering my tracks after every visit to the 'net.

Plus, there IS that sticky that has shown up here of late warning about potential lawsuits and such. What that post really says is "spies abound at this site!" That's no surprise, but I love thwarting spies.

Gonna do exactly what you advise tonight. Sounds pretty straightforward.

Sounds like Tip will have to be retired soon. Time to create a new account nobody knows about.

Thanks for the info.