[filmscanners] Re: Trying to track down a problem

["" <halftone@troutcom.com>]

I go one step further to protect accounts, passwords, and sensitive
personal info. I set up the computer that connects to the Internet
with its hard drive in a drawer so I can easily *remove* the hard
drive when I need a secure system.

Say I've been reading email (with the hard drive connected) and need
to make an online purchase or banking or whatever. I shut down the
computer, disconnect the hard drive and reboot from a Ubuntu Linux
LiveCD. At this point the computer is known clean and there's no way
anything can be saved on the boot disk (it's a CD after all).

After finishing my business all I need to do is log out of the bank's
web site then press the computer's power button to shut it off -- I
don't have to do a proper shutdown because there's no way I can
corrupt the CD by not allowing the system to do a clean shutdown.
That saves a few seconds.

It *is* annoying to have to shut down and reboot, but the knowledge
that the system really is clean makes it worth it.

Even if you boot from a CD it *is* important to not have a hard drive
in the computer because if there's a hard drive, the operating sysem
will save stuff on it and use it on later boots -- precisely what I
want to avoid.

Oh yes, what about the stuff I want to save? Most of the time it's
not needed, but for that which is there's always floppy disks or USB
flash RAM. You can be sure I check them for lurking viri, trojans, or
whatever before using them on another computer, then do a full erase
when I have transferred the info.

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