Wayne Williams explains how to use a sandbox to protect your PC from malicious programs, snoops and more
Sandboxing is a method used to prevent software from taking control of your operating system or making any changes to it. It works by containing the program in a secure and disposable section of your computer’s hard drive or memory. Software running in this ‘sandbox’ is allowed to read data from the hard drive as normal, but it can’t write data outside of the sandbox or make any changes to Windows.
There are several benefits to sandboxing software in this way, such as keeping your system safe from potential malware and letting you try as many programs as you like without worrying about cluttering up Windows or causing problems.
It’s also useful for privacy reasons: if you sandbox your web browser, nothing you do will be recorded on your computer, and bookmarks, cookies, cached pages and browsing history will vanish when you empty or exit the sandbox.