It depends on what they want to use it for, and for how long in proportion to the time that they’ll be around.
I don’t care if a guest who comes over for a few beers hops on to check email or myspace or whatever real quick, but I have had people come over to hang out and then spend an hour in my guest room on myspace, facebook, youtube, etc., and that is simply fucking rude. By the same token, I don’t care if someone staying with me for days spends an hour here and there online to amuse themselves, but I’ve also had people stay for a few nights and barely emerge from the guest room because they could not extract themselves from the fucking computer. Also extremely insulting.
My reasons have nothing to do with what’s on my computer or what they could put there; I just don’t worry about that kind of stuff until it becomes an issue. It’s just the incredible gall that some people have to come and stay with you in your home and then shun your company for a piece of fucking machinery.
I feel about as comfortable letting someone use my computer as I do talking to police, which is to say that I nominally don’t have a problem with it, but it does make me slightly uncomfortable and I try to avoid it. I don’t think I’ve got anything to hide, but what if I’m wrong?
I let houseguests use my computer, as well as friends. I would never let a stranger in a public place use my computer - one laptop stolen was quite enough (albeit not in that way). If necessary I would check something for them on public websites (e.g. bus schedules).
Was staying at an ex-neighbor’s house when we came back to town for a visit. They had a desktop PC set up in the guest bedroom we were staying in. Used it on occasion to check mail and then to play rhapsody at a very low volume while sleeping. With the bedroom door shut, you would have had to really been trying to listen to hear it.
Must have tripped their trigger - the 2nd, and last, night we were there I was getting ready for bed and noticed that the speakers had been removed from the PC. Nothing was ever mentioned but we’ve never accepted an offer to stay since then.
As for visitors at our house - feel free. As others have mentioned, I’m not crazy about someone visiting and then camping out n my computer all the time, but luckily that has been the exception rather than the rule.
In general, if someone is going to be on the computer at my house, it should be me. I’m doing the guests the courtesy of not being on the computer, they should do me the courtesy of waiting until they get to their own.
If there’s a specific reason (the other day one of my brothers wanted to show a video to the other one, who is known as “Mr Never Reads Email” so sending him the link might have meant he found it expired when he tried to watch), then I’m fine with it. Guest account, no password needed. I did growl at them for leaving it on when I had it off, but that’s part of the general policy of “leaving stuff you borrow in the same state and location you got it in.”
My coworkers and me all have laptops; we’ve been known to go to another one’s house (we work abroad) specifically to borrow the internet access and Skype home, while waiting for our own access to be activated. But the borrower brought his laptop.
I learned my lesson the first time I let anyone use my computer. It was my older sister, and she was snooping all over in files, while she was “checking her email”. She managed to find a few journals(mostly weight related) that I have in just minutes, but she didn’t even know how to cover her tracks. grrrrrrrrrrrr
So now, if anyone wants to use it. I will only let them use it under a guest user. And I put a quick password on my user ID. I don’t have a need for one now.
My main computer right now is a laptop. I also do on-campus mentoring for an online university course, and regularly let attending students use it to do coursework. I transferred more sensitive material to a stay-at-home hard drive, so I’m not too concerned about them poking around the files, and there’s little temptation to browse the internet, but I do cringe at the way they physically treat the computer. Often, students will poke the screen with the tip of a pencil or ballpoint pen (hard enough to cause the LCD display to bloom), or roughly move the computer about by grabbing the screen.
At home, I’m reticent about it. It’d be easier to get to my sensitive data, and my friends universally practice very unsafe computing. Often, their home PC is so hosed from spyware and viruses that they haven’t been able to do oh-so-important Facebooking/MySpacing, and they want to use my computer to check in. Nuh-uh.
I was at a birthday party for my friend’s boyfriend recently, and not only did the boyfriend keep ducking out of festivities to do some WoW crap, his best friend ended up asking to use a computer so he could WoW. My friend was justifiably angry; she’d planned a party, made food, invited everyone, but the guest of honor and best bud would rather sit at a computer and play a game instead of of participate.
At first I thought this had never come up, but then I remembered my laptop. I never let anyone online, but I did let them play games. I happened to know that none of them knew enough about computers to do any snooping, and absolutely everything private is properly secured, anyways.
Depends on who the guest is, and always with supervision.
I never thought about setting up a guest account. I should, since my housemate invites people frequently without notice.
