How to hide from a keylogger on a public computer

When you are at a public access terminal, it’s very possible that a keylogger is sniffing your keyboard. But sometimes it’s just so convenient that you have to use one of these machines anyway. To try and beat it, do the following:

1 Open notepad
2 Type part of your password in the password window
3 Using the mouse, go to the notepad window
4 Type some nonsense characters
5 Using the mouse, return to the password window

Repeat steps 2-5 a few times.

Make sure that the password window doesn’t show your password on the screen because bad people might have put a program on your computer that takes screenshots every few seconds.

(tip from Security Now Podcast, Episode 17)

One Comment

  1. Lee says:

    Oh and if you were wondering what exactly a key logger was, you can buy one from Thinkgeek for under $100.

    It’s billed as something to

    Monitor unauthorized access to your computer or your network. Use it to troubleshoot or make fixes by tracing back through a users command sequence.

    Yeah. Or steal passwords.

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