Think your roommate's been using
your computer while you're not around, but don't have any proof? Worried your
little brother or significant other is snooping through your stuff? Here's how
to check on both Windows and Mac OS X so you can catch and confront anyone
who's logging onto your computer without your permission.
Windows
In Windows, you can enable logon
auditing so that it keeps track of both successful and failed attempts. Once
it's turned on, it will record the username and the time of the logon. You can
find instructions for enabling it here.
Once it's turned on, you can see the
information in the Event Viewer, which tells you what your computer's
been up to recently. To open it, click on the Windows key in the bottom left
corner and type "event viewer" into the search bar.
From here, open Windows Logs.
Under the Security tab, you'll be able to see everything that's been
done on your computer. You can double-click on any event to see details. Any
event tagged with the number 4624 is a successful logon
Mac
On a Mac, you can check by seeing
when your computer was last woken from sleep mode. First, open Console
by pressing Command + Spacebar or clicking the Spotlight icon to
search for it. By typing "wake" into the search bar and scrolling to
the bottom of the list, you can see the most recent events.
There are different wake reasons to tell you
what caused the computer to come out of sleep mode. You can also search from
the command line by typing the following:
Obviously this only works if you put
your computer to sleep when you leave, but it's a good idea to do so anyway.
And, as usual, it's a better idea to password
protect your computer so someone can't logon just by waking it up.
Do you know of any other tricks to
see if anyone's used your computer? Or how about more details about what
they've been up to? Be sure to share them in the comments.
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