technical computer related question

[shyerthanusual]

Can someone who shares my computer who is a total computer whizz trace everything I type on the internet such as messages to mumsnet (I am assuming they don't know my nickname of course)?

If they're a genuine whizz then yes, they probably can.

oh no

A trace of the sites you've visited is kept but not normally the things you type. However if you are going through a company then it is possible that they will keep a trace.

I'm very nosey - but why?

Actually, thinking about this some more, I think that unless your pc is being monitored for each keystroke (which some of ours are at work for security reasons) then yes, only the sites you visit can be traced, not your password or posts. Having said that though, the back-up tapes were recently stolen from our office with all staff's personal details, addresses, home tel numbers the lot (work for govt dept who p* a lot of people off, so this is a genuine concern). We were fobbed off with the 'Oh it's all password protected, blah bla blah' line only to then recieve another message saying 'ooops, but anyone who know about computers could extract the info'.

Theoretically yes. In practice, not quite so easy. Assume you're using a Windows based system so there will be a "History" record of the pages you have visited, Cookie reports (wee bits of info that web sites store on your computer so they can be friendly the next time you visit), some passwords if you've asked windows to remember passwords for you etc. As for what you type in, they would have to install a keysttroke capture program or have a "sniffer" on the link that you use to connect to the Internet. The latter is quite commomplace now in many offices as it's used to analyse traffic on the Internet links and figure out when peak periods are, why, whta sites are being used, what's downloaded etc.; the objective being to optimise network speed and efficiency (and sometimes give overworked system administrators a good laugh to see who's doing what!!!!:-))

Go into Temp Internet Files on your pc and delete it all - it will save you some disk space anyway. Then delete your history files. Of course, if you are talking about what you have written on Mumsnet, you can always get Tech to remove all your past messages. But deleting your temporary internet files should do it. He'd have to work for MI5 to track everything you have done on the pc.

I am possibly being a little paranoid but I have posted some very personal stuff about dh (when not being shyerthanusual)which I would never say to him. He is th computer expert. I was gooing to add to the affairs thread but thought better not.
Snoobykat I love your name and have already noticed you are very knowledgeable on a wide range of topics. Thanks you and everyone else for your advices

In IE just go to tools/internet options and click on "clear history" and "delete files" - that will get rid of anything which is there at the moment. Also set the "Days to Keep Pages in History" to zero, and (under advanced) select the tick box for "Empty Temporary Internet Files when folder is closed" - which will get rid of copies of pages you look at in future.

Unless, as has already been mentioned, someone is really paranoid and monitoring your keystrokes, or they're a real expert who can extract data patterns from non-files in the way they do for criminal investigations (which is probably unlikely), then this should be enough to ensure that what you've doing won't be obvious to them.

I'm assuming here that you only have one PC at home, not two or more on a home network (in which case if your disk/directories are shared then someone else on another machine could see your history/activity before you finish a session).