The StealthSurfer thumbdrive is an internet paranoiac's dream come true. Pre-loaded with a virtual desktop environment, it leaves no trace of your activities on the host machine — at least according to the creators. Like a secret user account packed with useful applications and pocket-safe storage, it temporarily transforms any XP installation into your XP installation.
Four free years of Hushmail's web-based secure email service,
Firefox and Thunderbird are all setup on the sticks. Your IP address is masked using Tor, and Roboform password management keeps everything locked up.
At the heart of it is Mojopac, which works like an evil pointy-eared shadow version of its host OS. Tested with screen capture software and a keylogger, time spent in the Mojopac client desktop appeared only as a long, mysterious blank.
Mojopack is much slower than the host machine. It's also far from spy-movie discrete, taking about a minute to initialize every time it's used. When using the anonymizing proxies, web browsing ambles along at a sub-56k trudge.
What's good about it? You can carry your virtual OS, apps, email and personal files with you, wherever you go. It leaves no trace behind of your activities. You can run licensed software on multiple machines without feeling dirty. You can hide all your porn from prying eyes, and feel dirty. And finally, you get a selection of privacy-aiding extras like Hushmail, Privoxy and Tor.
What sucks? It only works on XP machines already booten into Admin accounts. Vista compatibility is said to be on its way.
Furthermore, it's not exactly top Ninja in the real-world stealth stakes. It takes a few minutes to get it running on new machines, and it takes a few moments to shut down. The MojoPac environment is sluggish — and very obvious, even from a distance. The gigantic onscreen "STEALTHSURFER" logo can be easily replaced, but is an amusingly self-defeating default.
Also, thumbdrives are still too small to contain portable lives:
better to copy it all across to a 2.5" drive with more space. Oh, and then there's the pointless tinfoil mad-hattery of it all. Let's not forget that.
$180 (2GB) to $280 (8GB), StealthSurfer
