KEY POINTS:
It seems like such a simple thing - making sure you've logged out of your webmail account on a computer so no one else can access your private info after you've used it.
But many people simply aren't doing it and in the process they're leaving themselves open to
everything from identity theft to fraud.
At an internet caf in Sydney last month I fired up Internet Explorer and typed in www.gmail.com to check my account.
Someone else's account popped up, their correspondence with numerous people in front of me. I quickly logged out, the thought of the same thing happening to me made me queasy.
The previous Gmail user had obviously just closed the browser to end their Gmail session rather than logging out of Gmail first.
A journalist friend who, bizarrely, doesn't own a computer but uses a Queen Street internet caf to check his email, says he's regularly coming across open Gmail accounts.
A couple of weeks ago, he even emailed a Gmail user from within her own account to warn her of her mistake.
Some internet cafes restart a computer's session between customer visits, wiping the browser history and cookies in the process. But many don't.
Gmail is such a powerful email platform due to its 2.8GB of free storage, search function and integrated messaging that many people are using it for the bulk of their online communications.
That's great - as long as you keep it secure. A Gmail log-in could grant access to your calendar, photos, Google Docs & spreadsheets and even your blog.
Imagine a stranger having access to that, your email correspondence and the archived Google Talk conversations you've had with your friends. It doesn't bear thinking about.
At a hotel in Christchurch yesterday I came across another example of digital recklessness - people leaving Word, Excel and PDF documents on the hotel computer after they've attached them to an email and sent them.
The documents folder of this particular computer held a random mix of business documents, private letters, a report from a pilot to his company.
I couldn't believe people weren't deleting the documents from the hard drive after they'd written them. The Trash bin had some documents in it but none of them had been deleted. Most of this stuff isn't commercially sensitive but its good practice to tidy up before you move on.
Finally, the other thing I occasionally see in hotels and internet cafes is data that's been CTRL C'ed (copied), ready to be CTRL V'ed (pasted).
Sitting down at a airport lounge computer once I hit CTRL V only to bring up a proposal for a US PR company business pitch that had obviously been written in Word then copied straight into an email.
You should always clear the Clipboard of copied text fragments in Microsoft Word before logging out to avoid this happening. CTRL-C something innocuous before you leave just to ensure you haven't left something sensitive ready for pasting.
There are enough threats on the web - keyloggers, phishers etc to leave yourself vulnerable through small errors like the ones outlined above.
If you're traveling and using computers make sure you cover your digital tracks before logging off.
