How to I safely log on to gmail from an un-trusted PC?

Question

I have just got back from holiday, I was not willing to check my email form the hotel’s “internet café” PC, as I could not think of a way of eliminate the risk that it had a “password logging” worm, virus, or intentionally install application. (Someone could even have installed a hardware keyboard logger into the keyboard socket!)

So is there any way to access web applications safely from untested machines?

(I would rather not take the risk of my laptop getting stolen on from the hotel room, and not all vacation type hotels have wireless internet yet anyway)

Answer 1

The password manager LastPass has a screen keyboard and also one-time-use passwords. The screen keyboard is specifically to avoid key loggers and one-time-use limits the value of the password if it is intercepted..

Answer 2

If you don't own the machine, there's no way to be certain that something isn't installed to capture keystrokes. I wouldn't log into a public machine to do anything other than check the news, ever.

If it's your own machine, you can use a secure (SSL/TLS) connection to your e-mail provider via someone's WiFi. That should be reasonably secure (though there's always the possibility of a man-in-the-middle attack).

Answer 3

Instead of using the GMail web interface, setup SquirrelMail (remember GMail supports IMAP) on your desktop or server and use the one-time password plugin.