How To Keep Someone from Snooping on Your Laptop

Even if you're doing absolutely nothing unusual on your laptop, nobody likes a snoop, or being snooped on. That's why there are plenty of ways to protect your personal files and history on your laptop with ease.

With technology advancing, it is also more accessible to advance the security of your tech. These are the top ten ways to keep someone from snooping on your laptop, from some of the simplest ways to ones that are a bit more intricate.

Lock your laptop.

As one of the first and simplest steps to keep someone from snooping on your laptop, put a lock on your laptop. Just like you would on your phone, adding a password to your laptop is one of the best ways to ensure no one is creeping on your files while you're not there.

There are even technologies that allow you to get into a laptop with just a fingerprint, much like the iPhone. This makes things easy and simple, if you're only concerned about someone looking at a personal laptop.

You could even try a safe.

If you want to take things one step further to keep someone from snooping on your laptop, you could even try a safe. This is especially great for those of you who have no faith in technology that can be hacked.

Storing your laptop in a safe is not uncommon, and there are even safes that are created specifically for this purpose that won't take up much room in your office or bedroom. This would work especially well for those who are concerned about leaving their laptops alone in a dorm room, or simply for people who require a bit of extra security.

Try out biometric security.

Biometric security is one step better than PIN codes and passwords. This is because it is easy to witness someone typing in their code, and after that, they have all the access they want to your laptop.

Biometric security allows you to either use a fingerprint or face scan that will allow you to unlock your laptop. Plus, there is always a backup code and password, for extra security. Plus, this will allow you to alter your passwords regularly. This tactic will certainly make your snooping friends leave your laptop alone.

Use private browsing.

Next on our list of the best ways to keep someone from snooping on your laptop is to use private browsing to your advantage. Though using a private browser constantly might seem a bit sketchy, it isn't used solely for porn viewing.

Private browsing can be used for many reasons, one of the main ones being that your accounts aren't constantly logged in on your browsers, ready for people to snoop. Instead, private browsing allows you to privately access anything you need on the internet, without the constant unnecessary log keeping.

Set up a separate account for friends and family.

If you're concerned about sharing a laptop with someone else, it is easy to set up an entirely different account for them to access the laptop, without accessing all of your personal files and history. This can be done on MacOS or Windows, and is as simple as setting up a separate user account that will appear after starting up the laptop.

They will provide their own password, that you won't have access to, and vise versa. Plus, you can also add a guest account, which will not have a password, but will allow anyone who wants to use the laptop that is not one of the initial accounts, without going on your own.

Adjust your browsing history features.

If you find yourself constantly erasing your search history, there are ways to adjust your browsing history features, to eliminate the obviousness, without using a private window. As one of the easiest ways to keep someone from snooping on your laptop, not having much search history is one of the best ways to provide your snooper with little information on how you use your laptop.

This can be done by changing when you erase your history, within the hour, within the day, all time, the options are easily personalized. If you don't want someone seeing what you've been looking at for the hour, this is the best way to erase the history, without being sketchy. Or if you want, you can show the full history, and individually delete items.

Alter your recommendations.

While internet suggestions can often be a great feature for finding similar content to what you've been clicking on, it can also be the source of embarrassment for many. Outing many people on their hidden interests, altering your recommendations is thankfully easily done.

If you're looking to do so on Amazon, simply find the choice called "Improve Your Recommendations" and personalize your list of products you've purchased that you'd rather not be advertised. For Netflix suggestions, you have to consistently click "Not Interested" in the content you're not so interested in showing others.

Hide certain folders.

If you're looking to share one account on your laptop, but still have a few files that cannot be shared, hiding specific folders is a great way to hide them. As one of the best ways to keep someone from snooping on your laptop, hiding folders and files is a great way to store aside some of the information on your laptop, while still allowing access to the rest of the computer's storage. For example, 7-Zip is a great individual file and folder encryption.

Create an incognito account.

Taking separate laptop accounts one step further, giving yourself an incognito account is another way to hide your most precious files. This means that you will create a second account on your computer with the same name, same picture, everything, but add your middle initial to separate the two, to avoid confusion for yourself.

This account will be the one that you would want people to see, and a more clean version of your own. This is great for people who believe that whatever account they use, it can be broken into. Once you have a doppelganger account, this one will be the one that's snooped on, not your actual, especially if you just leave it open.

Remove autocomplete suggestions.

To complete our list of the best ways to keep someone from snooping on your laptop is to remove autocomplete suggestions on your laptop. Much like recommendations on Amazon or Netflix, autocomplete suggestions on search engines give away each of your recently searched Googles.

These will come up even if you erase your history, so they're not so easy to get rid of. Instead of playing roulette every time your friend starts to type "p" into your search engine, selectively get rid of the autocompletes in your text inputs by pressing Shift+Delete after highlighting the unwanted autocomplete.