boyfriend help: If someone is system administrator on a home computer using win xp can they access my personal history and e-mails if they set up an account for me ? - Help.com

Not if your account is protected by a personal password which YOU may know only. (At least 6 to 8 signs, mixed with numbers and letters!)
But yes, the administrator can have a look into your whole account, if it’s not protected by such a personal password.

Yes; I can check the entire history of every person on this computer. I just navigate to the right folders, and look at everything any time I need to.

But, email is a different story. For that, your emails have to be coming to their in boxes. If you login to a site like Google mail or Yahoo! and use their email service, no one can can read them.

Dragon_Lady wrote:
Yes; I can check the entire history of every person on this computer.

Even id the accounts (on the computer) are password protected?
(On a Mac it would be impossible, even for the administrator — that would be a very heavy weakness more of Microsoft stuff.)

yes; even the password protected ones.

So he can see where I’ve gone on the internet and have access to my banking info?

Even my help,com questions anonymous or not ?

Banking info….maybe, but probably not. Most Windows computers don’t cache secure web pages. He may have it set to do that, but even if he does, it likely times out before he has a chance to take advantage of any of the information.

For instance: If you login to Chase bank, and move money around on that computer, it *may* save a copy of the page you viewed in the internet cache. But, if someone opens that page and clicks a link, they will have to login with your name and password to accomplish anything. And most sites like banks won’t allow Windows to store form data like usernames and passwords on the client computer just because of situations like yours.

Things you can do:

Before you close the internet explorer Window, go to the Google homepage or any other page that doesn’t contain much information or many pictures.

Then click on “Tools” at the top of the page, and choose “Delete Browsing History”. From there, tick all the boxes, and hit “delete”. That will clean up almost everything. It will take a serious power user to find any of the small amounts of data that will be left on the hard drive after that.

But he can still see everywhere I’ve been on the internet ?I just feel it is none of his business. Also if he can and never told me about it is that legal grounds for charges ?

No, no legal grounds. You allowed him to set up the account on his computer, and it’s his property. But as I told you, if you delete the browsing history before you shut down Windows -and do it every time- there won’t be much of anything to find.

I just seen this:
“Access to Personal Folders
By default, with the Windows XP Recovery Console, the security level is set so that the Administrator’s access to the hard drive is limited — to only the root folder, Windows folder and Cmdcons folder. You cannot, by default, access other folders such as Documents and Settings which contains User folders, your Desktop, etc. or any personal folders. Try it and you will see—an access denied message will result (unless the Administrator changed the setting). But with the Windows 2000 Recovery Console method, this XP security setting becomes useless. The entire hard drive becomes an open book — any folder can be accessed.”
( http://pubs.logicalexpressions.com/pu… )

So Microsoft made some step backwards since them …
Too bad!

May I suggest changing all of your Passwords, and do not forget the password on your mail supplier serves IE Gmail/Yahoo…….
Only in this way you can rest, however keep a note of all your passwords in a very safe place.