Micro,
Just some random thoughts.
If your computer is ON then the federal snooops can hear you and see you if you have a camera hooked up.
The only computer I have that has a camera is my laptop. I do not have microphone or camera hooked up to any other computer. As I believe Duit mentioned, a piece of electrical or duct tape easily takes that out of commission and a cotton ball (or a foam ear plug from work) taped across the microphone should take care of that.
If personal information gained from possible hacking is your concern - can you consolidate all personal info storage onto 1 computer, then you only have one computer to have to worry about security on and possibly, if you feel the need to go that far - only one computer that would be shut down unless you or the Mrs. is on using it.
Explore networking options. While I was in Kansas, I accessed the web through a friends wireless router - he gave me the security code for the router, and while I could access the web - I could not access his home network or any of his computers that are on his home network even though they all used the same router that I accessed.
A question for V-golf would be - can two completely separate home networks share a router? Can you have computers A,B, and C set up on network "XYZ" and computers D, E, and F set up as network "ABC", share the same router, but not share data outside their individual networks?
Also, check into encryption - the company I work for recently installed something on our computers that encrypted all the data on our laptops so that if they were stolen, anyone accessing the data on the computer would have a heck of a time using any of it as they would have to break the encryption code first - is there anything available for the private citizen that would be similar?
And lastly:
The latest is a reporter/journalist (that word is used far too often)who was on O'Reilly's show last night. She would be in bed and her computer would get turned on in the middle of the night.
I have an observation - not being able to directly question the reporter - at least one of my computers will start itself back up when the power restores - I haven't checked to see if it's off when I lose power if it will start itself up - is there a possibility that something like this was happening? Just a random thought as I'm definitely not negating what she said.
You and Mrs. Micro have to do whatever you have to do to feel secure - while all of us would hate to see you stop folding, I think all of us would also understand if you felt like you had to. Hopefully, you'll hit on a workable solution to your concerns.
Whatever happens, don't drop off the board - whether you're folding or not - you're a good friend and we would hate to lose contact with you!
Sun :-)
| 