This tutorial will teach you about, and how to bypass various computer security methods. If you know the ways around the methods you can better decide which are best for you.
No computer is ever going to be 100% secure. Even after deleting and rewriting over data several times it can usually be at least partially recovered. Anything you do over the Internet is logged, usually many times on several different servers. In short using computers to do anything you don't want to be traceable is not a good idea. However it is possible to make it harder to access you files.
Almost any computer security is going to rely on a password, and no matter how strong the security is, if you are using a poor password it will be easy to get around. There are a few main ways someone is going to get you password.
Social engineering is basically tricking you into giving out your password. I won't go into how to avoid being tricked into giving it up, but I will sum up with just don't be stupid. The main thing I want to bring up here is the strength of your password. Passwords should be random upper and lower case letters, numbers, and special characters, ideally changed often. For example kIN8$ne0, is a good password. You should also use different passwords for different things. If something you use is easily hacked to give you password then someone has your password to everything. The problem is obviously it can be hard to remember different random strings like that. You could write them down, but that obviously raises it's own security risks. A decent method for coming up with passwords is like this. Pick say four things, like the last four presidents, then use the second letter in the last names, republicains in uppercase, democrates in lowercase, the last digit of the year they took office after the name. E2U8l2U8 for example. Gives you a decent password. Use something that you wouldn't really be expected to use. Don't use say first four albums of a band you like.
Brute force is simply tring every single possible password, using a program to do it automaticlly. This is why you need to mix it up with numbers and special characters. Usually these programs will go through a dictionary first, then it will replace l's with ones and stuff like that. But if you use a truelly random password using all the stuff I said above there are far too many possibilities to go through.
Keyloggers record every thing you type. They are usally programs running in the background, prehaps a virus you downloaed, that emails the log of what you typed back to the owner. Sometimes they are hardware that you plug the keyboard in, then plug the keylogger into the computer. There are a few ways to get around keyloggers, although the best way is obviously to just not be stupid and allow them onto your system. But if you have to use a computer that you know is keylogged then you can use the on screen keyboard, or you can copy and paste things from a large body of text. Both of these are annoying but they will kept what you have to say secret.
Bios passwords prevent you from even starting the system. When a computer turns on it will say something along the lines of press del, or f2 to enter setup. That takes you into the BIOS. In the BIOS you can either set a password for changing the bios or one to start the system.
Bios passwords are easy to identify because as soon as you turn the system on they will prompt you for the password. Some BIOS have master passwords built in, these will always allow you to get by them. You can search for lists of master passwords if you want. I've found the list unreliable, and it's usally more trouble than it's worth. Another method of getting around them is to reset the BIOS. Sometimes there will be jumpers on the motherboard that you can use to reset the BIOS, but a easier way to explain is to just take out the battery. If you open the case, you will see a large flat greenish board, on that board is a round silver battery. Sometimes the BIOS will reset in seconds if it's removed, sometimes they have a capacitor built to make it able to last for days. You can always drain the capacitor, but if you don't even know what a motherboard is I don't think you should be draining any capcitors any time soon.
Taking out the BIOS battery really isn't that hard, however I have a feeling anyone reading this won't be trying it. It's really a pretty foolproof way around the BIOS password. The only problem is it will restore the settings in the BIOS to defaults, which could "break" the computer. Although most BIOS are on the defaults anyway.
