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Ghostzilla-CD 1.0.1
Welcome, Surfer! You already know what Ghostzilla is. Now you will learn how to use it. You may want to jump right on the program, but you absolutely have to read the basic instructions or you won’t get anywhere.The first part of the document is the very short Getting Started section. The second part, Ghostzilla Manual, gives you more details on everyday use. Read it right after you get the idea from Getting Started how to ride the Web with Ghostzilla. It isn’t long either and you will have a good time exploring the options. Legal note: you must agree to the terms of Ghostzilla license agreement to use Ghostzilla. Don’t run the program yet! Read all the instructions first, than come back and start Ghostzilla.
Ghostzilla-CD is the CD-only, no-installation version, of the clandestine, invisible, camouflage (there are a few descriptions) Web browser Ghostzilla. Ghostzilla browser is your tool against those around you who look at your screen to see if you're surfing the Web. With Ghostzilla, all they see is your normal work screen; only you see the Web page inside it, rendered to look just like your work from more than a couple of feet. But if they come as close to the screen as you are, your simple moving the mouse away will make already barely visible Ghostzilla vanish without trace. When the coast clears, your another simple mouse move will bring Ghostzilla back. Ghostzilla-CD has one additional, but indispensible feature: it runs directly from CD, without any installation. During your browsing session, it creates some temporary files in Windows TEMP directory, but removes them all on exit. This way it leaves no trace of activity. On exit, only your personal settings (preferences, bookmarks, passwords, history), the so-called user profile, are stored in a small, portable, encrypted archive, at the folder of your choice (Ghostzilla-CD never writes into Windows registry). You can even chose to archive the profile on a floppy than you can carry along with Ghostzilla-CD. Armed with Ghostzilla-CD and the floppy with your profile archive, you can surf surreptitiously on multiple computers, without leaving trace on any one of them, always keeping your settings with you. Ghostzilla is derived from today's most powerful browser, Mozilla, version 1.0.1. When you first run Ghostzilla from the CD, it offers to restore your profile (more about it later), and loads in memory. When it loads, it blends itself with your work screen. You only see its thin menu bar, address bar, and this welcome page. Click on the address bar (or press F6), type the address of the Web site you want to visit, and press Enter. Your page should come up in a second; Ghostzilla guesses your network proxy settings so you don't need to do any setup. In rare cases where the guess doesn't work, set the proxies by choosing Setup->Network Proxies menu option. The page will be gray on white, and you won't see any big pictures. It has to be so to avoid attention. But if you move your mouse over a picture's frame, the picture will show; by default, in black and white. Soon you will see how you can control this appearance. It might help you to know how Ghostzilla works: it finds a topmost window of your current application, and shows itself on top of that window. This is why it appears Ghostzilla becomes a part of your work application, but it really doesn't change anything in it. Ghostzilla first looks for a convenient window in the center of the screen, and if it doesn't find one, it looks around. You know already that the browser disappears if you move your mouse away. This is what you do if someone is approaching your screen: just move the mouse pointer away (up is most convenient), and let the original application shine through. This move will send Ghostzilla into hiding, inactive but listening, and waiting for you to summon it back. When you are ready to surf again, do the LEFT-RIGHT-LEFT movement: move the mouse all the way to the left of the entire screen, then all the way to the right, and again all the way to the left. Ghostzilla will show up again perfectly blended with your work screen, even if you changed it meanwhile. But the page it will show will be exactly at the point where you were when you hid it. Think of this move as rubbing a magic lamp to get the ghost out -- you have to rub the lamp just right, all the way to the edges and reasonably quickly, for release to happen. When you are ready to call it a day, choose the Exit option, or press Ctrl-Q. That will completely unload Ghostzilla from memory. On exit, Ghostzilla will offer to store your personal settings in an archive (again, details later), and then it will remove all the files it has created during your browsing session (in Windows TEMP directory). There will be no Ghostzilla files left on your PC, except for the archive. The archive can be anywhere you chose, even on the floppy, it is small and can be encrypted, as we will see. Ghostzilla has a few more menu options than you typically see, because it doesn't have a toolbar. Here are the options you can use:
To access a menu option from the keyboard, press Alt and the underlined option letter. For example, Alt-C will take you one page back. Unlike Internet Explorer, Ghostzilla has only one window for the Web. But that window is capable of showing multiple pages from different sites. This is called tabbed browsing. To see how it works, just click on New menu option and another tab will appear. Enter the new address and the page will load. To go back to the first page, just click on its tab. To close a tab, click on the little "x" icon to the right of all tabs. The other way to open multiple pages is to right click on a link, and select Open in New Tab option. Sometimes you may want the option below that one, Open Link in Background Tab. This is perfect for search engines: you see three or four links to pages you might like, so you open them all in background tabs, and let the browser fetch them while you continue reading your main search page. In Ghostzilla, pop-up windows are disabled. Ads and unwanted pages won't be able to surprise and annoy you. You can control how "ghostly" Web pages will be, by selecting Setup->Hiding Level menu option. Ghostzilla supports the following levels, for your hiding pleasure:
When you change the hiding level, you may not notice the change immediately, because some pictures are cached. The easiest way to control the size of the Ghostzilla window is to resize the windows of your work application to your liking before activating Ghostzilla. Another way is to press the CTRL key and the UP or DOWN arrow within Ghostzilla -- CTRL+UP will shrink Ghostzilla window, CTRL+DOWN will enlarge it. At any time, you can press the keys CTRL and "[" (left angle bracket) together to shrink the letters of the Web page you are looking at. Keys CTRL and "]" (right angle bracket) will enlarge the text, and CTRL and "=" together will set the letters back to the original size. You can shrink the window and the text so much that even someone sitting next to you will likely be unable to see that you're surfing the Web. Ghostzilla has built-in search with Google engine. Just type your search query (for example, type stealth surfing) in the address bar as if you would on Google directly, and press the Up arrow key and then Enter. Google search on your phrase will be automatically performed. Other than the Alt-underlined letter shortcuts you see from the menu, use these shortcuts as well to speed your navigation:
A browser like Internet Explorer creates, uses, and expects to find, numerous files on your PC: your personal settings, browser cache, etc. Ghostzilla doesn't expect to find anything on your system when you start it, and doesn't leave anything on your PC when you exit it. All the files it needs, it stores in Windows temporary directory, and removes them all on exit. However, you will want to have your personal settings remembered: your bookmarks, history, passwords, certificates, preferences; but you don't want to leave them on the PC you use. On exit, Ghostzilla-CD lets you store those settings in a small profile archive, that it puts in "My Documents" folder (by default; you can pick the name and location). That way, no one can know, by looking at files on your PC, that you have used (and will use) Ghostzilla. You can further protect the archive with a password. And, best protection of all, you can choose to store the archive on a floppy! This way, you can bring your settings with you, and move from PC to PC with Ghostzilla-CD and your floppy, never leaving files around and always having your personal settings with you. Let's start with what happens when you exit Ghostzilla-CD, after your first session. You will see a dialog like this:
Read the text carefully. If you press "Yes", your current profile will be archived in c:\My Documents\profile.ar, unless you choose otherwise. You can enter a password if you want to encrypt your archive. By default, the "delete all profile files" filed is checked, and we recommend you leave it that way. If checked, whether you chose to archive your profile or not, the temporary files, a proof that you have used Ghostzilla, will be removed. If you choose to use a non-standard folder and name for your profile, you can choose to remember that location; that location will be stored in your Windows registry under an obscure name and encrypted -- unlikely to ever be seen by anyone else -- but it's safest if you don't use this option. So now, after you exited Ghostzilla-CD, your profile is stored in an archive. The next time you start Ghostzilla-CD, you will be offered to restore the profile you archived the last time. You will see a dialog like this:
If you select "No" (or press Escape key), Ghostzilla will start with a default profile. If you select "Yes", it will restore your previous profile. If you protected your profile archive with a password, you must enter that password now. When you surf with Ghostzilla, keep in mind that your school or company server automatically logs every Web access you or anyone else makes. Some companies routinely search these logs for names of pornographic or offensive sites. If you access those sites, this information will be recorded in the logs, whether you use Ghostzilla or anything else. Therefore, do not visit such sites. You may also want to use plain Mozilla browser (from time to time at least) for your regular, overt surfing, since Mozilla and Ghostzilla have the same "browser signature." You can find a copy of Mozilla on this CD. To learn more about Mozilla, visit Mozilla.org. Most surfing options that apply to Mozilla, work in Ghostzilla, too. Those options that work against the goals of secrecy and invisibility, are disabled. Check the Help menu option to learn about Mozilla features. Ghostzilla is based on an open-source browser-development platform, Mozilla. The terms of Netscape Public License and Mozilla Public License require that distributions of the original Mozilla, modifications of Mozilla, and "Larger Works" i.e. combinations of original Mozilla code and proprietery code, make the modified code available as well. For Ghostzilla license agreement and availability of portions of Ghostzilla that originate from the Mozilla source code, please click here. Other than Ghostzilla-CD itself, you will find the following on the CD:
Copyright 2002,2003 Ghostzilla.com. All rights reserved. For questions or comments, please send an email to support@ghostzilla.com. |