Diggnation recently covered a Digg headline about Geek Squad. This has happened before, of course, because the so-called “Geek Squad” is (pretty much) uniformly laughed at by us computer nerds.

I digress though.

The latest situation is the result of someone being pretty sneaky. The owner of the PC put software onto their computer that would record a video of everything that happened on their PC; mouse movements, folders opening.. every little thing was recorded. After this was installed they then sent the PC to the Geek Squad to have iTunes installed. That was the only “work” that they hired Geek Squad to do.

What happened? The sneaky recording software caught someone at Geek Squad copying all of the porn from the computer onto a thumb drive. Not only that, but the person at Geek Squad was apparently checking the Properties of folders to see if they contained enough data to be worth their time. Sheesh!

This made me think: What if it had been financial data? Work or school documents? Other people’s (friends, family, clients’) personal information?

You can imagine how this made me consider the subjects of security, privacy, and even identity theft. It was a chilling thought!

Once at my computer the majority of my data would be right out in the open. As unlikely as this scenario is, I had to wonder what I could do to prevent that level of intrusion.

The answer was a combination of TrueCrypt (which I already had installed), and portable versions of Firefox and Thunderbird.

The majority of my personal data, at least until classes begin this August, are my instant message chat logs, my emails, and my Internet browsing history/cookies/data. Coincidently, most spyware will target your browsing history so it’s a good idea to seal that up regardless.

I’ve addressed the situation by using TrueCrypt to create a 300 MB volume, and I installed the portable versions of Firefox & Thunderbird into that volume. All extensions, email, and profile/account data was then moved into its respective places for the portable FF & TB. Thus all browser plugins and EMail account data (and stored emails) were maintained. Trillian was also set to store its chat logs inside of this encrypted volume.

TrueCrypt now prompts me for a password when the O/S loads, and without this password it’s not possible to view my browsing history, web cache, chat logs, or emails. As a result, the majority of my personal data is now stashed away.

On Windows Vista Ultimate x64 look in this location for the data:

c:\users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming

That is where you should find most, if not all, of the files that you’ll need to transfer for both Firefox and Thunderbird. (Replace “USERNAME” with your login name.)

This is all good practice for when I buy a notebook (possibly this Fall). Since Notebooks can be stolen or need to be sent in for repairs it will be a very good idea to have good security practices already in place. I will most likely move the TrueCrypt volume to a thumb drive to make it easier to use the exact same data (email, browser) on both systems with no need to synch the data otherwise.

Fun times.

~Steph

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