14 DAY TRIAL // Even if plenty of people do not see the importance of public computers, these devices are definitely necessary; but apart from providing a trove of information, accessing data through them also comes with a risk because there is no way to know what the previous user’s intentions and actions were.
Many libraries make available computers that offer access to knowledge that is not shared with all Internet users. Viewing this information is absolutely free of charge, but in many cases, it can only be extracted through the paid printing services of the library.
Internet cafes also provide computer systems that can be used by anyone for a fee paid for a specific period of time. Just like with many libraries, there is no restriction as far as the purpose of the computer use is concerned.
Apart from these two examples of places where people can benefit from free access to a computer, there are certain businesses that offer their customers free Internet access through their computer systems. These are mostly related to the hospitality industry.
As appealing as the idea of free computer use and Internet access may seem, working with this sort of machines is almost never without repercussions, especially if they’re used for activities that require entering of personal details.
Regardless of how often they’re used, which creates a sense of familiarity and trustworthiness, public computers should never be employed for accessing personal web accounts like email and social networking sites, and it goes without saying that they are in no way to be trusted for checking financial-related accounts.
It’s because they’re public that they are automatically insecure. With the flux of unknown users they’re seeing, there is no way to immediately find out if someone infected it with malware, despite the security solutions that may be installed on them.
A computer a hacker has physical access to is no longer a safe system. There are numerous ways to bypass protection layers and to turn it into a center for logging sensitive information. It's enough to point the most obvious of them: booting into a live operating system and modifying the data on the underlying OS so that it works in the favor of the attacker.
Sometimes, infecting this type of machines can be done inadvertently, since there are as many browsing habits as there are computer users.
Even if landing on pages known to carry malicious software is restricted, administrators of public computer networks cannot limit access to cloud storage services, such as Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox and the like, from where a crook could download malware.
For a regular user, with no harmful intentions, accessing these accounts is in itself a mistake, but someone motivated to spy on the computer activity does not have this privacy problem. They could always create an account specifically for carrying out the nefarious task.
Recently, the U.S. Secret Service notified businesses in the hospitality industry that they arrested two suspects who installed keylogging software on public computers of hotel business centers.
These machines are the perfect trap for cybercriminals, as they see a very large number of users on a daily basis. Getting the email addresses of just a few of them is important for the crooks, as they can then work their way into obtaining access to more potential victims through spam or phishing campaigns.
There are some simple rules that could be followed in order to stay out of trouble’s way. The purpose of a public machine is to help users find the information they want, so they are not intended for checking the personal email or messages from friends on social networks; and they are definitely not designed for verifying the balance of a bank account.
The basic rule is to avoid any action that could lead to tracing the identity of the user. These are systems for digging for information, not for taking care of personal business.