Visited websites, messages, all kinds of files and everything we do on a computer can be checked without professional software. A nosy boss or suspicious partner can check our computer in a few seconds.
Full administrator access
Probably our office computer logs on to the company central computer. The so-called server. Servers are maintained by network administrators who, after logging in, automatically have access to our computer. They are a little bit like a janitor with a golden key which fits all doors. The administrator can:
- Grant or deny a user authorisation to install software.
- Register all computer processes.
- Obtain full access to our files.
As a standard, the administrator has free access to C and D hard drives – folders of those partitions are made available automatically.
The visited websites
If our computer is not protected with a password, colleagues, supervisors or members of family can search through the computer. Our secrets can be revealed by the history of visited pages. Therefore, it is important to delete it. This option is offered by all leading browsers. Cleaning the history can be performed automatically or manually. Unfortunately, it is not always effective. Our activity can still be revealed by the saved cookie files or professional software for spying on a computer.
Recently opened documents
Not only a browser, but also the list of recently opened documents says a lot about us. If someone wants to see what you have been doing during the day, it is enough to expand menu of the taskbar and choose the proper option. This function can be relatively easily blocked.
- In the Microsoft system with the pressed Windows button we press down R.
- Then we enter gpedit.msc and click OK.
- In a new window we choose the tab Administrative Templates, Start Menu and Taskbar.
- We check the option ‘do not keep history of recently opened documents‘. Then we check Enabled and click on OK.
Done. Now the computer monitoring stopped to be very easy.
Of course, all this constitutes very simple methods of spying on a computer. The advanced monitoring software uses more sophisticated methods and their detection often turns out to be very difficult. KeyGrabbers, i.e. devices capturing the keystrokes, are the easiest to detect. Mostly, they adopt the form of plugs connected to the computer port.