Extra email security help!! !! !! !! !!

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I'm paranoid about people reading my emails, so after using my mum's computer (if mine isn't working), I always clear passwords and cookies. I don't know if it's possible for people to hack into email accounts that were accessed on the computer, but Mum's boyfriend is a tech support guy who knows everything about computers, which makes me suspicious and paranoid about my email account.

Can anyone suggest further ways to increase security to put my mind at rest??

If your mom boyfriend is tech support, and he has access to you computer you best bet is not use it for that. Use a new anonymous email and check from somewhere else.

Anonymity is the best security.

Technically, it's possible to spy on everything you do on a compromised computer without you noticing. Possible, but unlikely. So your best bet is do a clean install of Windows/Mac/Linux on your own computer and clean installs of all programs. And install reasonable amounts of security software and the latest security fixes...

It's usually a compromise between security and ease of use (or ordinary laziness). How much security do you need? And how much do you distrust your mother's boyfriend?

Be aware also that Google Desktop is frighteningly good at exposing the contents of a computer

Emails can be sent encrypted! In your household only you should have access to your own email account, as well as data on your own computer. Data can be encrypted in Windows as well as other operating systems.

If your so concerned about security and privacy, I would highly recommend that you stop using, your current Windows install entirely or hardly ever whilst it's connected to the Internet, after all many security threats for it, unlike with other operating systems. Also many malicious programs like to call back home, by using the Internet. Criminals or malicious programs can control your computer whilst it's Internet connected.

He may be a technician and everything, but it does not take much for a computer to be taken over by criminals! Many of those people are very clever, they can make it so that you or him have absolutely no idea that the computer was taken over easily.

The only way to make sure that an operating system is clean of malicious programs is to start over with a clean install, however some viruses can even infect the BIOS of the computer.

If your so concerned about security and privacy, you really should look into using another operating system, where hardly any malicious programs exist.

If you used a Linux distribution such as Ubuntu, you would actually have to know what you were doing to get a malicious program installed. Well unless you had no firewall and a really stupid user account password such as 123.

Today I read online that the UK government might start tracking everyone's emails, which was way scary, but my friend told me that encrypting them will stop that little NWO plot, so I did. Will that help with the full problem??

Depends on how good the encryption is. What kind of e-mail account are you using? Yahoo accounts are notoriously insecure.

For encryption, I'd recommend either PGP or TrueCrypt. Even the FBI can't break PGP (at least not yet).

I have GoogleMail. I just went into settings and selected "always use https", but I don't know exactly how secure that is.