If the machine is your dad's then I would say he has the right to see what's on it.
Whether it is ethical is another matter.

If you want to keep your files totally private then there are bits of software to encrypt directories, or think about a ZIP drive, or one of the USB smartcard readers.

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by SPIKE
a woman showing me one of her piercings

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It wasn't Teresa was it?

Like Vinnie says, removable media is probably the best way to keep your stuff private. Maybe floppies, or a cdr if you have the drive? That way you can take your private stuff off the compand store it safely

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by DJ Billy
(quotes)
It wasn't Teresa was it?

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No it was not!

In addition to the excellent suggestion of removable media (I'd advocate a zip drive, an Iomega Zip250 is only about £60-£70), you may wish to consider maintaining a separate user profile/account on the computer, and also remember to tidy up any evidence you leave behind of things that you may not wish your father to see -- clear your browser cache and list of recently accessed files etc.

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by Callum
you may wish to consider maintaining a separate user profile/account on the computer,

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Even assuming he's running an OS where that's possible, it wouldn't help if his dad wants to look at stuff, since he'll have access to the Administrator account anyway.

The only thing to do would either be to use removable storage, or use WinZip to compress and password protect files - not terribly secure, but should do the trick.

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and also remember to tidy up any evidence you leave behind of things that you may not wish your father to see -- clear your browser cache and list of recently accessed files etc.

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I'd recommend getting TweakUI which allows you to clear the document history on logout, etc.

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by In a State of Dan
(quotes)
Even assuming he's running an OS where that's possible, it wouldn't help if his dad wants to look at stuff, since he'll have access to the Administrator account anyway.

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True on both counts, however:

1 -- almost all modern OSes will allow multiple accounts in one form or another, so I don't think it's unreasable to suggest it as a possible option

2 -- it depends on the level of protection needed -- if his father isn't actively looking to see what Spike's been doing but simply browsed through immediately obvious files then this will suffice, however if he's actively seeking to monitor Spike's activities then having administrative access to the PC means he can do whatever he wishes, including installing monitoring software, so removable media may not be sufficient; basic security really -- if root cannot be "trusted" on a box then nothing running on there can be trusted, any security procedures will only deter casual transgressions and (possibly) slow down commited threats.

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by Callum
1 -- almost all modern OSes will allow multiple accounts in one form or another, so I don't think it's unreasable to suggest it as a possible option

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It's not a bad suggestion, especially if the privacy invasion isn't actually malicious. I was just thinking about Windows 95/98/Me, which have no file permissions and multiple account handling so poor as to be not worth using.

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by In a State of Dan
(quotes)
I was just thinking about Windows 95/98/Me, which have no file permissions and multiple account handling so poor as to be not worth using.

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I guess it comes down to whether the security needs to be good, or simply good-enough; so long as the concept of a multi-user environment is present there's some hope. Then again, AFAIK none of the MS OSes (except maybe XP? Not sure) really do multi-user, they just do everything as root and pretend.

Even xp is a kludge, but anything NT based is good enough to prevent access to the average user

Is getting your own, separate PC an option?

You can create an encrypted virtual hard drive, which is essentially a file on your hard drive. This has the benefit of being pretty much transparent and very secure.

There are quite a few apps that provide this sort of system, just do a google search for them.