SANDBOXIE or how to be sure you're surfing the web safely (For: 2000, XP, NOT Vista)

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What’s a “sandbox?” A sandbox is a program which creates an area on your hard drive and opens programs inside that area which are hermetically sealed within it unless you the user let them out. SANDBOXIE is a really good FREE sandbox program.

You can run ANY program sandboxed (see Diagram “1”) below

Diagram 1

But if you run your WEB BROWSER sandboxed then anything which your browser downloads, or any changes made to your browser settings will remain within the sandbox.

If you want to download a program or a file to your computer you need to tell Sandboxie.

The following dialog box will open and you’ll need to choose the “recover” option. (See diagram “2” below)

Diagram 2

You can control where the file gets downloaded to or just allow the default which downloads the file to your desktop.

Uploads are no problem i.e. you don’t need to open a program un-sandboxed to upload.

File opened with Sandboxie have a pound (hash) sign on either side of the program name so it’s easy to see instantly whether you’re running sandboxed or not. (See diagram “3” below)

Diagram 3

If you open a program with Sandboxie you won’t be able to print because the program is in the sandbox and so unconnected to the rest of your computer. You’ll need to open it un-sandboxed to print. If you want to print a page from your browser you can open your browser normally (i.e.not with Sandboxie) and copy the URL, go to that page and print.

I probably spend 90% of my time online within Sandboxie and only open my browser un-sandboxed to print or to change browser settings.

(By the way this means that if you want to change settings in your web browser you’ll need to open normally, without the sandbox. Changes you make will then be seen when the browser is opened sandboxed as well).

When Sandboxie is running you will see this icon

in your system tray if you have a program open or if a program has been used and the contents of the sandbox have not been deleted and this one

if the contents of the sandbox are empty.

Although this is not necessary to remain secure, you can empty the sandbox globally or the contents of a specific sandbox at anytime by right clicking on the sandbox icon in the system tray and choosing “Delete contents” (See diagram “4”) below

Diagram 4

You will then be given the option either to close the dialog box or to remove the contents of the selected sandbox. (See diagram “5” below)

Diagram 5

For convenience I re-named the “default browser” icon “Firefox” and I just use that to launch the browser sandboxed (if for whatever reason I’m not using Launchy – see my post here )

This program is free but after a month you’ll get a dialog box (see below) when you open the program which will go away if you make a donation. But the free version has full functionality.

You can download Sandboxie free program here.

Comments, Questions, Suggestions …

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