Digital Data Privacy - Beating the Keyloggers

First of all, I realize that today is Valentine's Day, and secondly, this is a very anti-Valentine's Days posting, but the inspiration for this blog posting came to me in the shower this morning.

Digital Data Privacy is very much on my mind lately. It all started when the Lovely One gave me the book "Total Recall" by Gordon Bell. The whole premise of the book is that eventually every one's life will be available digitally -- I mean everything. All of your emails, bills, your events -- everything. Bell himself wears a camera and records everything for posterity. In the book, Bell stated that digital data privacy is of paramount importance.

I have been thinking about how to store data privately, and how to communicate with someone without anyone, and I mean anyone including the CIA , FBI, NSA -- anyone being able to read it. I have some interesting algorithms that I am developing.

And the third key to inspiration was reading the book "Game Change" by Heilemann and Halperin. It is the behind the scenes look at how Obama won the presidency and the back stories to Hilary Clinton, McCain, Palin et al. In it, they detail the story of how John Edwards went from nice guy to egomaniac, including the story of his love child. Privacy, or lack thereof is a game changer for many lives.

So as I was soaping up in the shower, I thought that if a girlfriend, spouse, political opponent, office rival or anyone wanted to spy on you, it would be a piece of cake to do so. They would surreptitiously install a keylogger. A keylogger is a piece of software, sometimes found in viruses, spyware, parental monitoring programs and spy programs designed to capture every single keystroke and save it. That way if someone types "I Love You" to someone that they were having a tryst with, it could be read by reading the keylogger log. It is a tough thing to beat, unless you could actually monitor the software on your machine and find the keylogger. Most people do not have those skills. It is at that point that I got the inspiration.

I know how to beat a keylogger. If you suspect that there is a keylogger on your machine, tactically, it might be better to keep the keylogger on. You could beat it with my method. It is simply this. Open a Notepad (plain text file) and type in the following:

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 AM PM A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Then when you want to communicate with your lover, foreign power, secret admirer, dominatrix, whistle blower, reporter etc, you just open the file, and copy and paste letters into you email, instant message, chat bot or however you communicate surreptitiously.

This is the electronic equivalent of the ransom note cut from magazine and newspaper headlines.

As you need more words, you can cut and paste them from internet pages. Other handy words include:

meet me at call cell phone usual place do not come stay go the and don't tell husband

Well, you get the drift. All that the person reading the keylogging files would see would be:

(cut text) (paste text) (cut text) (paste text) (cut text) (paste text) (cut text) (paste text) (cut text) (paste text) (cut text) (paste text) (cut text) (paste text) (cut text) (paste text) (cut text) (paste text) (cut text) (paste text) (cut text) (paste text) (cut text) (paste text) (cut text) (paste text) (cut text) (paste text) (cut text) (paste text) (cut text) (paste text)

and no one will be the wiser.

I realize that this information could be dangerous in the wrong hands. However like all inventions it could be good. This way the Palestinians and Israelis could negotiate a peace treaty and no one would be the wiser. You are welcome!

PS - Happy Valentine's Day. Tell someone that you love them -- preferably not by the above method.