Recently a friend told me about a conversation he'd had with his teenage son. It seems that the boy had been over here on several occasions visiting with my nephew who lives with us, and apparently the boy was bragging that they were looking at a few things that they shouldn't have been looking at on my computer. I decided not to confront my nephew with this until I had proof. So I immediately went looking at the history on my computer. I recognized sites and Web pages that I had in fact visited over the past few weeks, however it shows nothing out of the ordinary.
I discussed this issue with a colleague who is much more computer savvy than I am. (I'm probably boarder line incompetent on computers) and he told me that if the kid first invoked "private browsing" there would be absolutely no traces of where he'd been.
I had never heard of "private browsing" but I am now aware of this feature on the Firefox toolbar. Indeed I did try it and after then looking at the History I found no record of the web page I had just visited!!
So can anyone just jump on a computer, look at anything they want to or go to any website they want without there ever being a trace of it left behind? This really disturbs me. If this is true what would the police do in a situation like this? How would they get information off a suspects computer if he hid his whereabouts from everyone?
But now my bigger concerns are how can I know if my computer, my files, and all my personal information will ever be safe anymore? And what if they were looking at something illegal for instance that left some kind of traces behind that I can't see and that could somehow be retrieved that could potentially get ME into trouble? This is really upsetting. I'm really thinking about going back to carbon paper. You can't hack that.
Can anyone please explain what this private browsing is, how it works, and what it will and will not do? Can I disable it so that he won't be able to hide his escapades in the future? I guess I'm more computer illiterate than I thought. Thanks for any advice. Lenny