flash drives in cybercafes

Submitted by monoCongo on 30 November, 2007 - 12:25.

I was wondering if anyone is using a USB flash drive in the cybercafés. I have a Thunderbird browser, Skype and other open source software installed on the 4GB drive. To be able to walk into an Internet café and use the software setup I’m familiar with would be great. Maybe Tony has some thoughts on this from his Internet cafe experience.

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My U3 USB drive has..

Submitted by Doug on 2 December, 2007 - 14:25.

Portable Apps ;

http://portableapps.com/

and RoboForm2Go;

http://www.roboform.com/pass2go.html

The U3, ScanDisc "cruzer" drives have a write protected partition with Anti Virus software, Portable Apps let you synchronize with the full version software later, and RoboForm fills in passwords, credit card info and such avoiding key logger type programs that my be haunting cyber machines

-Doug

If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate

Great links, thanks.

Submitted by monoCongo on 2 December, 2007 - 14:56.

Great links, thanks. Looks like keypass on portableapps.com does what Roboform does, only it is open source. There is some other good stuff there. I have the ScanDisc Cruzer and the protected partition you mention must be the system folder. The aps are U3 and they seem to have some sort of pertection.

flashdrives in cybercafe

Submitted by casper on 1 December, 2007 - 13:11.

Yes, I did exactly what you were talking about last year. It worked well until I contracted a virus at a cafe in Rivas. Stupid me, of course, for not anticipating that possibility. If you can add some preventive software to your drive it's probably a good idea. I was able to clean mine up but it also wiped out my Firefox, defeating the whole idea for the rest of the trip.

good point

Submitted by monoCongo on 1 December, 2007 - 16:58.

If you lost Firefox on your trip, couldn't you have hopped on the Internet and reinstalled it from the Mozilla site?

Those PCs are probably riddled with viruses, worms and spybots. I installed Grisoft AVG anti-virus software on the drive and with it I can scan spicific drives. I'll also put spybotSD.exe on it so I can search and distroy anything it sees as spyware.

For traveling I think medical records, phonenumbers and addresses, a .pfd reader, maybe a news reader and Staroffice might be useful. These drives are so small, they could be sewn into clothing.

Most cybers run as limited user.

Submitted by Jinoturistica on 30 November, 2007 - 16:10.
Most cyber cafes run software that prevents installation of programs onto the hard drive. Many also run as limited users. If your install needs admin priviledges then forget it.

The next grade of 'memoria' software treats the device as a CD and starts an auto-run program. Since data is not being written to or read from the hard drive you have at least a 95% chance it'll work here.

Some flash drives can be inserted and the PC rebooted to take over the whole m/c. Tht would largely work here as the business is not sufficiently mature to block it.

here is how to test at home. On your PC, create a limited user. Logon as that user and try your memoria. If it works at home as limited user, you should be fine down here.

Thanks

Submitted by monoCongo on 1 December, 2007 - 17:00.

The USB memory is treated like a removable drive. No read write privileges are necessary on the host. When you plug in the USB module it puts a menu on the desktop for access, so it acts like an auto-run. The PC doesn’t need to be rebooted. Sounds like it should work if the cyber manager doesn’t object.