Have you ever had anyone sneak a peak at private stuff that you have on your computer?

This has never happened to me…I don’t let people use my computers.

Yes, I had an ex boyfriend that found my list of passwords and went through everything on my computer. Then wanted to bitch at me because I had a match. com account which was inactive! I would never have known he went through my stuff if that hadn’t ticked him off. He also went through seven years of old bills to see who I called and when.

How did you find out?

She confronted me.

@chyna Scary!

@Mama_Cakes2 I’m sorry that happened to you. I hope you told the person how totally inappropriate it was, and that they had lost your trust.

@Mama_Cakes2 She confronted you? The nerve of people know no bounds.

@marinelife Yes and it pissed me to no end. I still wonder if I got everything changed. I even changed my garage door keypad code, which he knew.

I talked openly here (and Facebook private messages) about my family and family issues. She found it and confronted me on it.

@Mama_Cakes2 But she had no right to look at your private stuff!

@marinelife I know. And, yes, it’s someone whom I have a lot about this past year.

I know my roommate sneaks around in here when I’m not around, I can tell from the history being all weird at times and extra cigarette butts in the tray, I have no idea what she hopes to find though. But she can’t use any of my accounts or anything. I wonder what she thinks of all my saved images that are mostly gore and porn haha. I bet she’s dying to say something about it.

When I was 12 or so I’d write stories and save them to my Windows account on the computer. My mother actively looked for them and found them and asked me about it once, and I stopped writing after that.

Some of them were personal, like the ‘thinly veiled autobiography’ type stuff that writers tend to write when they first start writing. I think that’s how she found out I was (am) gay. Still hate to this day that she did that.

I have separate accounts for other people who might use my computer. I leave it locked when I am away and my /home area is encrypted, so hopefully no one has been snooping in my stuff.
Windows 98 and earlier had no real concept of user accounts. However, every modern operating system has this feature. Make an account for yourself on your computer. Unless you are a computer expert, don’t use the “Administrator” account. It’s for administration only. If you need to administer something on your computer, use it then and go back to your regular account when you are done. This will go a long way towards keeping your computer happy and healthy.
If anyone else needs to use your computer, you can make an account for them. It takes only a few seconds to do. Then they will have their own separate area on the machine with no access to your stuff.
If you are feeling especially generous or short on time, you can make a “Guest” account that anyone may use. Again, this account will not have access to your stuff.

If you let other people use your account, you had better expect them to see your “private” stuff- because it isn’t private.

Remember- log out or lock when you leave!

Not that I know of. If my husband looked at anything I would not care anyway. I would care if it was anyone else.

I have nothing on my computer that I wouldn’t mind sharing with anyone.

Work files are on a separate hard drive and anyone who wanted to could see them, but I could not allow anyone to have direct access to them. Too much to lose for the clients sake.

I’ll answer with preventative thoughts first:
If you use Firefox, set your master password. That’ll require them to enter the master password before they can log in to any site. It’ll also require them to enter the master password before seeing your saved passwords.
Did you know that in Firefox, you can go to Options->Security->Saved Passwords and see all of the saved passwords right there, in plain text? You can! In Chrome, you can go Options->Personal->Show saved passwords and see those in plain text too! Surprisingly, Internet Explorer doesn’t save like those two do. In Opera you can go Preferences->Forms->Password Manager to see the account names, but not the passwords.

To the best of my knowledge, nobody has snooped on my PC. I’ve always been one to lock my computer when I leave it. And that uses a unique 10-digit password that includes special characters, numbers, and upper+lower case letters, and is a non-dictionary word. So it’s certainly safe from somebody just sitting at my keyboard taking guesses, given that there are ~94^10 possibilities.
For my web browsing, I use Chrome. I have all of my passwords and website stored. But I keep no shortcut to it on my desktop, taskbar, or start menu. Instead what you’ll find is Opera shortcuts. I’ve got unimportant data saved in Opera, as a bit of a decoy in case anyone does care to snoop around.
My coveted adult film collection sits in C:\Porn. I’m not afraid of people finding those videos.

The only thing I really worry about is people finding my Fluther account. It’s been my hidden treasure for over a year. I’ve said things I wouldn’t say if I knew people from RL would see it.

@Sarcasm

MOM?!?

My kids and I use the “always keep me logged in” feature on facebook, so we accidentally see each other’s stuff from time to time. I’m not too worried about that. I’d be actively pissed if someone was snooping on purpose. I’m sorry that happened to you, girlie. :(

Yeah but I have all the good stuff on a flash drive and I try to keep the password boxes unchecked to automatically sign in. When I think about it, there’s not much my mother or SO could find online that they don’t already know.
How I wish they were as careful. Oy.

My ex girlfriend and I shared a laptop when we live together (she owned it and made a user account for me).

She ended up going through all of my emails and memorizing all of my passwords. She informed me of reading my emails but not the whole password business. After we broke up and I moved 3,000 miles away, she ended up going into my fluther account and leaving people pm’s and eventually deleted my account.

The whole time, she kept lying about all of this stuff. Even after we broke up, she kept reading all of my emails and looking at my facebook messages, fluther pm’s, ect, ect…

Needless to say, it sucked.

@kenmc Been there. It does suck.

I never use automatic log on’s for that very reason and make sure I log off when done.

That’s just wrong. I hope you adequately chastised the snoop and did not address anything she might have said or asked you about what she found on on your computer. IMO, she lost any right to complain the second she invaded your privacy. That behavior deserves no reward.

No matter who the person was, if that happened to me, that person should count on getting my cold shoulder until an adequate apology is served.

To my knowledege, this has never happened to me. If it has, that person better never tell me.

I have friends over often. And they sit down and use any of the computers. They can easily read whatever. The passwords are saved, but not visible. Who cares though, there’s nothing to hide – or nothing they wouldn’t expect. Because they know me to some extent. And if they see something they didn’t expect, we can always talk about it.

I used to be much pickier with my computer accounts. But it was mostly my laziness to fix things. People tend to mess shit up if you leave them on a computer for too long. Install crap, yadayada. Mess with my settings. I like my settings :)

No, but I’ve snooped through other peoples’ files before. As a result of my past transgressions, I keep my own stuff locked down pretty tightly.

I’d challenge any of my family or friends to find important or even useful information on my computer; the thing is full of junk.

That’s why I have my computer password protected and always log off when I’m not using it. I never share my passwords with anyone, not even my boyfriend.

Although I have to admit, I’ve poked around in my bf’s stuff before, such as his cell phone, facebook, and email. But I didn’t purposely log in, he would normally already be logged in whenever I looked. He knows now that I’ve looked at his stuff, but he didn’t get mad at me.

This is why it’s so important not to post anything you wouldn’t want anyone else to know, not even friends or family.