Cyber Security on the Road – Protecting Your USB

Many travelers use their smart phone or laptop while they are on the road, but for most of us, there comes a point when we need to use a USB. USB is short for Universal Serial Bus, but most of us call them thumb drives. A USB lets you transfer documents from one computer to another or save documents or files from a computer you don’t take with you such as a home computer or even a computer in a cyber cafe.

What a lot of people don’t know, however, is that by using your USB in a cyber cafe, you are exposing yourself to viruses and malware that can infect every other machine your thumb drive comes in contact with.
To be specific, a USB is actually the port that the thumb drive plugs into. The drive itself is a small flash drive which can be in varying sizes from a few MB to 4 GB (big enough to hold films and plenty of photos or songs).

Obviously, you can’t run a virus scan on every machine you use your flash drive on, so the question comes up, how can you protect your drive when you go to a cyber cafe?

Since cyber cafe computers are often used by many different people (and many different flash drives) you can’t be sure what is on them. Unfortunately, you can’t use a condom on a flash drive, but there are other options. First of all, when you log on to a cyber cafe computer, log out of any programs that are running. A good way to do this is to press ctrl+alt+delete on windows based programs and then close down any programs that you don’t recognize. If you shut down the logging program of the cafe, you can ask for help in restarting.

Better safe than sorry. Also, be sure that the browser settings are not saving your username and password options automatically. This can be difficult if the machine is in a different language, but by simply knowing the word for no in whatever country you are in, you can be pretty sure that clicking no will be the right choice.

Next, if you leave the computer, log out. Don’t leave the machine unsupervised. All it takes is a moment for someone to load a virus on your USB. Finally, make sure that you clear all the browser history before you begin and when you are finished.

Obviously, if at all possible, you should avoid doing any online banking of financial transactions on public computers or networks. These are basic steps whether you use a flash drive or not. For the flash drive specifically, make sure that you use a password protect.

Only insert your flash drive if you actually need it. And last but not least, you can install anti-virus software on your USB! Companies like McAfee and Norton offer flash protection with their comprehensive service. This is definitely worth it for any traveler who will be using a thumb drive on the road.

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