How can she see if it's been used?

Happy_saver_4

How can you tell if your home computer has been used to connect and browse the web whilst you're absent at work?

My DD doesn't have an ISP but thinks that somebody in the house may have a paid for a dial up ISP and using her computer for web searching etc.

How can she check? Is there a internet usage log file somewhere on the computer and if so how do you find it?

Can she also see what has been searched?

gcn504

A very quick way, presuming the person hasn't cleared the history, is to click on the IE HISTORY icon (the one that has an arrow going counter clockwise on a clock). This would show which sites had been visited for the last few weeks.

Sorry if you've already thought of that.

Little_John

the easiest way would be to check the tempory internet folder for files or check the history folder and maybe the cookies folder.

These folders on XP and windows 2000 are stored within the documents and settings folder on the hard disk then in the user name that is used to log on

in windows 98/95 they are stored in the windows folder.

Chippy_Minton

Look at the browser's History of pages visited (Ctrl+H in Internet Explorer). If that's been cleared, use a tool which allows you to view the index.dat file where IE also stores the browser history, e.g. http://www.stevengould.org/software/indexdatspy/.

Chippy_Minton

Happy_saver wrote:

Can she also see what has been searched?

Yes, as long as Autocomplete was enabled and hasn't been cleared since. Go to the search engine, e.g. https://www.google.co.uk. Typing in the letter a will show all searches beginning with a, continue with b, c etc. Also, type in double quote " to see quoted searches.

Little_John

There may also be an entry in the event log but I havnt used a dial up for ages so I couldnt tell you what entries to look for.

save-a-lot

Hi

If someone is using dial up then would there not be a dial up program on the PC? Try Start > Programs and look for newly installed programs.

bluep

Why not get your daughter to set up windows user accounts and a password so that people can't access her pc when she's not there? Or if she doesn't use the computer for internet access, she could disable the modem. Both of these are relatively easy things for people on here to talk you through step by step and can be reversed later on...

A_Nice_Englishman

There are many ISP's which allow access via an 0845 number from any telephone line without any more formal arrangement. They make their money from the portion of the call cost passed to them by the telephone company. Get your daughter to check with her phone company to see if any such calls have been made. They will be able to tell you when the calls were made which should help track down the person responsible.

I agree with bluep that user accounts and passwords should be set up. If 'someone' has been using the computer, what personal information might they have seen?

Another thing to do is hide the modem lead. Sometimes the low-tech solutions are the best