From Wired: How to secure your data

Surveys suggest that 3 out of 4 companies monitor employees’ online activity. Protect yourself from workplace prying by following a few simple rules:

Cover your clacks

If you suspect the man is logging your every keystroke, install Spyware Doctor 3.8. It’ll expose any program running silently in the background while you work. (Note: you may need an admin password to install the app. If your IT department refuses to help, try bribing them with a spool of blank DVDs.)

Surf undercover

Prevent your boss from tracking your daily URL crawl with a Web-based program like The Cloak, which masks the addresses of sites you visit by redirecting your browsing through its domain.

Change up your email

Don’t use your work email for anything other than, well, work. If you want to send private messages over your employer’s servers, set up an encrypted email account with a provider like Hushmail.

IM on the DL

With an admin password, you can download an encrypted service like PSST (psst.sourceforge.net) or a program like Encrypted Messenger, which encodes most IM clients. The quick and dirty way: open an AOL IM account and use the Web-based chat service. With all the Web activity at work, the chance that anyone will notice your texting is small.

Delete Files Forever

You do know that file-recovery software can resurrect everything you just emptied out of your Trash or Recycle Bin, right? It may look as if you’ve removed them from the hard drive, but the 1s and 0s of the so-called deleted files still exist. The only sure way to permanently erase sensitive material is to overwrite the disk space with new data.

PC
Download the free Eraser app, which uses a process rigorous enough to meet Pentagon standards.

Mac
Choose “Secure Empty Trash” from the Finder menu and the skeletons in your hard drive are toast.

Get peace of mind

Still spooked? check out the Electronic Privacy Information Center’s guide to cloaking tools.