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All right, so you're a privacy conscious individual.
You've got two factor on all your accounts.
You use a reputable VPN service,
and you even watched our earlier episode on
what your ISP knows about you.
But what if there was something lurking
on your computer itself that could spill
all of your secrets in spite of your precautions?
I'm talking, of course, about a keystroke logger
or keylogger, a nefarious type of program
that does exactly what it sounds like.
It logs every button you press on your keyboard.
And while sometimes these can be used
for legitimate purposes like parental monitoring
or language research, they also make it child's play
to steal passwords and search history
or even spy on emails to your significant other.
Yikes.
And because a keystroke logger
or keylogger's principle of operation is so simple,
they're easy to code, easy to deploy
in a wide variety of situations, and easy to hide.
Once you get infected,
often by clicking on a compromised link,
software keyloggers can live just about anywhere,
operating inside a script on the webpage itself,
injecting themselves into the memory space
used by your programs to make them hard to detect,
or even getting into the code
of your operating system itself as a root kit
or by posing as a keyboard driver.
By the way, root kits are nefarious little bastards.
You can learn more about those up here.
Making matters worse, unless you can see the keylogger
in the background or in your notification tray,
or you're like noticing obvious delays in the keystrokes
that aren't explained by anything else,
it is really difficult to know if you have one installed.
Defeating them can sometimes even require
specialized anti-malware software that is designed to protect
against logging software.
So you might want to consider that if you're really concerned
that someone might be spying on you.
And while you're at it,
you might want to check the back of your PC too.
Fortunately, these are usually pretty easy to spot,
but hardware keyloggers also exist,
often as a dongle that sits between your keyboard cable
and the USB port on your computer.
These can be especially troublesome in settings
where people might not be able to see the back of the PC,
like in a library or an office.
And depending on how valuable your work is,
even that might not be enough.
There have been cases of hardware keyloggers
being embedded inside a keyboard by a determined snoop,
and then either retrieved wirelessly using a transmitter
or physically by going back and digging it back out later.
It's also even possible for keyloggers to sniff
the sometimes unencrypted connection
between a wireless keyboard and the PC
to snatch keystrokes out of the air.
And we're not done yet.
Now this is some real James Bond level stuff right here.
It's also possible to record the sounds that you make
as you press each key,
and use the fact that each key will sound slightly different
based on its position to reconstruct what you typed.
Then if that's not crazy enough,
security researchers have found
that keyboards give off different frequencies
of radio waves when different keys are pressed,
and can even trigger smartphone accelerometers
strongly enough to discern different keystrokes
if it's sitting close enough to your keyboard.
So I think all of this is enough
to make pretty much anyone paranoid,
but I do have some good news.
Unless some spy agency is after you,
your best bet is to just take a quick glance
at your cable every now and then
if you're using a PC in a shared environment,
run good anti-malware software,
and as always, stay away from shady links.
PIA VPN supports multiple protocols and encryption levels,
which allows you to dial in the exact level of protection
that you need.
You can run it on up to five devices at once,
and they've got apps for Windows, Mac, Android, iOS, Linux,
and even a Chrome extension with support for more platforms,
and they're coming soon.
They've got lots of great features,
so in addition to being able to bypass geo-restrictions
and censorship by making you appear
as though you're connecting from somewhere else,
you can also block unwanted connections to prevent attacks,
auto-block all traffic if the VPN disconnects,
and it even includes MACE, PIA's built-in malware blocker.
So what are you waiting for?
Check out PIA at the link in the video description.
So thanks for watching, guys.
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