We have private browsing but what about private working?

jgallcash

Working for a charity with a fairly average tech setup and sometimes I have to share computers with colleagues.

Keep most of my work on a memory stick so it’s not accessible to others but some of the files that I work on are very obviously named and can be seen clearly in recent documents.

Whilst we have admin privileges for the PC’s it’s not feasible to setup lots of user accounts for the people that may use the PC.

Is there any way of private working in an easy way? A lot like starting a private browsing session in a web browser?

DVardysShadow

jgallcash wrote: »

... Whilst we have admin privileges for the PC’s it’s not feasible to setup lots of user accounts for the people that may use the PC.

Is there any way of private working in an easy way? A lot like starting a private browsing session in a web browser?

You only need an account each for anyone who needs their material protecting plus 1 other ID [conventionally 'guest'] for the rest. Frankly, setting up the IDs is the easy way.

tronator

jgallcash wrote: »

Whilst we have admin privileges for the PC’s

When will people learn. This is an accident waiting to happen. This forum is full of horror stories.

jgallcash wrote: »

it’s not feasible to setup lots of user accounts for the people that may use the PC.

Why is it not feasible? Are there too many and are they changing frequently? Then you could set up at least one for you and one for everybody else. And remove Administrator access from all user accounts.

jgallcash wrote: »

Is there any way of private working in an easy way? A lot like starting a private browsing session in a web browser?

If you have your own user account then you just lock your session (Windows+L) and everybody else can log in with the other account(s).

I don't wanna convert anybody, but my Ubuntu has such a feature. I just can open a guest session with a clean account which gets cleared at the end of the session. Maybe worth looking into it in the future since you're a charity.

Aiadi

Or how about doing all your work within your flash drive environment (i.e using portable applications and your drive as the storage device).

Look at:
portableapps.com

as a starting point.

Owain_Moneysaver

If you don't have a proper user accounts and passwords system then your employer is almost certainly in flagrant breach of the Data Protection Act. Ditto if your USB sticks are not password protected and encrypted.

BandJB

Aiadi wrote: »

Or how about doing all your work within your flash drive environment (i.e using portable applications and your drive as the storage device).

I'd be a bit careful about saving all your work to a Flash drive. They can fail at any time and/or easily suffer physical damage which makes them unreadable. (My Springer Spaniel chewed up my weekly backup Flash drive, for instance!) Maybe you could have two and alternate them 'daily', copying the contents of 'Yesterdays' drive to the hard drive at the start of the day; working on them; then moving the contents to the alternate Flash drive at the end of the day. Should only take a few seconds each way and a hell of a site better than losing all your work.

In my experience, Murphy's Law and Sod's Law always operate as a pair.

jgallcash

Thanks for the replies all. some good ideas.

In my rose tinted spectacles world i was hoping it would be as easy as pressing ctrl,atl &P as it is in Firefox to start a private session.

Some good alternatives

Leopard

Password-protect the files.

scottishblondie

BandJB wrote: »

I'd be a bit careful about saving all your work to a Flash drive. They can fail at any time and/or easily suffer physical damage which makes them unreadable. (My Springer Spaniel chewed up my weekly backup Flash drive, for instance!) Maybe you could have two and alternate them 'daily', copying the contents of 'Yesterdays' drive to the hard drive at the start of the day; working on them; then moving the contents to the alternate Flash drive at the end of the day. Should only take a few seconds each way and a hell of a site better than losing all your work.

In my experience, Murphy's Law and Sod's Law always operate as a pair.

Indeed! I'm currently trying to get the data off of a snapped USB stick containing the only copy of my friend's CV and 5 job applications, which she needs for tomorrow. Be very careful!

easy

I do some IT support at my son's school, and regularly have to remind the teaching staff that memory sticks are NOT a suitable primary storage location for their important work. They are unreliable, & easily mislaid. One teacher came crying to me a few weeks ago, because his summer terms lesson plans had all gone west, when he'd left his memory stick in a pocket of his jeans which had then gone in the washer.

We give all teachers a laptop, a private account on the network and private home folders on the very expensive new server we bought, and synchronisation to offline files they can use when working at home. There is NO excuse....

tronator

RussJK wrote: »

The best method would be to make your own user account and password protect it. Of course if others have admin access, then they could easily change your password to get in, but it'll stop the casual data protection breaches that you mention.

No need to change somebodies password to get into his files if you're admin. Just access is directly through %USERPROFILE%\..\