Tip: Type Your Password Safely on Public Computers
Trust me, you will never get away from using public computers whether at cyber cafe, your friend’s house, school lab, your work place, etc.
Highly likely you will be using those computers to excess your email account or anything that required you to enter your sensitive and private data such as your password.
You will never know how ‘safe’ you are when you type in your password. You are most likely vulnerable to many malicious, spying tools namely keyloggers which log all your keystrokes and eventually your password as well.
You can’t check whether keyloggers exist or not but you can, however avoid your password being logged. What you need is just a free and ready available tool that comes with Microsoft Windows – the On-Screen Keyboard tool. (All Programs > Accessories > Accessibility > On-Screen Keyboard) Thanks to Raymond for pointing this out. All of the on-screen keyboards do prevent from hardware keyloggers but NOT software keyloggers. How to combat this?
So, one of the REAL solution is by using Shellfish (Download). Shellfish is a portable and small on-screen keyboard that uses one of five techniques (Direct Paste, Clipboard, Control Send, Store Overide and Store Append) to get around keyloggers.
Yup, that’s what you need. So, don’t think about installing or using some other sophisticated tools, no.
So, by using Microsoft On-Screen Keyboard Shellfish, you need not worry about getting your keystrokes logged by keyloggers because as you know the On-Screen Keyboard is operated by mouse click and are stored in memory before output it on screen.
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Comment by Raymond »
You’re wrong Matthew. Try installing a keylogger and it can capture the letters from Windows On-Screen Keyboard. It is not safe. However, there are third party on-screen keyboard that keyloggers can’t capture.
Comment by Matt »
@ Raymond
Thanks for pointing out. This is interesting. Windows On-Screen Keyboard is somehow still a keyboard. I’ve done some googling and I also found out that most third party on-screen keyboards didn’t provide protection from software keyloggers.
But I’ve found a special purpose on-screen keyboard tool, Shellfish to combat software keyloggers. I’ve updated this post accordingly.
Thanks again.
Matt
Comment by Louise »
Keyloggers are always an issue when using a public computer but when it comes to protecting your passwords there are other hidden threats. Here is a blogpost I just posted about this:
http://passpack.wordpress.com/2008/07/23/travelers-check-your-browsers/
Louise
Comment by Matt »
@ Louise
Interesting article. Passpack sounds great!
matt