Computer Security

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Since CRN Japan uses an electronic mailing list as well as email, you may include sensitive information in writing at some time.  Certainly, in any case, you do not want your Japanese spouse to find out about the CRN Japan website. Well, there have been cases reported where the Japanese spouse installed a key logger on the non-Japanese spouse's computer.  In another case, the  Japanese spouse hired a hacker to break into a public email account. (I think it was yahoo, but cant remember.) The emails later showed up in family court.  One of these cases was a husband, and one was a wife.  So you need to be careful regardless of gender.  So here are some guidelines on various things you may want to consider.

Deny Physical Access To Computer

If possible, you want to keep your spouse away from your computer, physically.  Once you have physical access, anything is possible.  If you live apart, this may be possible.  (Although never leave him/her alone with the computer, and make sure you have secure passwords as below.)  If you cannot ensure that your spouse cannot access your computer, then you should consider using public email with a strong password.

<<describe key loggers and how to detect them>>

<<list several public email services, and some in Japan>>

Learn How to Clear the Cache on your Browser

Your computer browser stores a history of everywhere you have visited on the internet.  The CRN Japan website and your public email server are among these places.  You can clear this list if you know how.  You should do this even if you use public terminals.

<<describe how to clear the cache on popular browsers>>

Close  Browser When Finished

Always close all browser windows when you are done, because a browser may "cache" sensitive information, such as passwords.

Never Use "Remember My Password" Feature

If your computer is not physically secure from your Japanese spouse, never use a feature of your browser that remembers your passwords for your email account.  Also, never tell the email account to "automatically log you in" or to "remember my password."  Your spouse can use these features as easily as you can.

<<discuss exception for Firefox, but why you shouldn't use it anyways -- it shows what site you have accessed>>

Use Strong Passwords

In the case of the spouse who hired a hacker to break into their public email account, I believe that the risk of that is relatively low by now.  So they probably just tried to guess passwords or used some other type of social engineering.  (Its also possible they used a keylogger.) But the moral of this section is to use a secure password for your public email account.   Certainly do not use single words, especially not any words connected to your life. It also helps to add numbers, perhaps between two words. Another common trick is to substitute numbers for letters that kind of look like them, inside words. Such as zero for o, 3 for e, 7 for l (el upside down), etc.

<<more info on single words>>

Use False Name and Obscure Details

When posting information in a public place, like the CRN Japan mailing list, do not use your real name.  Also, you should obscure unimportant details of your case, so that in case your spouse sees this, s/he will not realize it is you.  For example, if you live in LA, say you live in San Francisco.  If it becomes important to clarify later, you can do that.

Resources

TBD