Protecting your private pics/photos...

[2insandiego4u]

We've been reading about some concerns in other threads about protecting photos (and possibly movies) on your computer from kids, computer repair techs, IT staff, etc. Most people assume that an external drive is the best or the only solution. While this can be effective, it is not free and can be cumbersome. We use a free open source utility called TrueCrypt. It is available for Windows XP/Vista, Mac OS X and Linux. You can download everything you need from this web site:

TrueCrypt - Free Open-Source On-The-Fly Disk Encryption Software for Windows Vista/XP, Mac OS X and Linux

This software supports the strongest encryption available today and is updated frequently. It is ideal for hiding sensitive files and is very secure. It also works with external devices and drives for added security. Check it out!

[JoCoCpl]

That's awesome - thanks for the tip!!

[JustMrJ]

From a computer technician's point of view, this is a good idea. Encrypting your sensitive data is always a good idea. I can't begin to tell you the number of BUSINESS computers I've serviced that have had some seriously revealing photos on them of the person using it and their spouse/significant other or past lovers.

In your own home it's much easier to be lax about this, but what if your computer needs work and you take it to a tech. You never know when one will be the type to copy data off your system. I don't do that, but then again, I have about 20 gigs of porn on my external drive anyway.

Good find and good advice 2insandiego4u!!!

[2insandiego4u]

Originally Posted by JustMrJ

From a computer technician's point of view, this is a good idea. Encrypting your sensitive data is always a good idea. I can't begin to tell you the number of BUSINESS computers I've serviced that have had some seriously revealing photos on them of the person using it and their spouse/significant other or past lovers.

In your own home it's much easier to be lax about this, but what if your computer needs work and you take it to a tech. You never know when one will be the type to copy data off your system. I don't do that, but then again, I have about 20 gigs of porn on my external drive anyway.

Good find and good advice 2insandiego4u!!!

We know several professional computers techs, and they copy just about anything they have access to -- music, movies (regular and porn), pics, software, etc. They even brag about it! If you take your computer in for service, it better not have anything on it that you would not want the tech to see, copy, or post on the Internet. Glad to hear that not everybody does this.

[two4youinswva]

Originally Posted by JustMrJ

In your own home it's much easier to be lax about this, but what if your computer needs work and you take it to a tech. You never know when one will be the type to copy data off your system. I don't do that, but then again, I have about 20 gigs of porn on my external drive anyway.

That reminded me of a video sting I saw a good while back. Kind of makes you see it really does happen.

See the video here.

[jdavisauto]

Originally Posted by 2insandiego4u

We've been reading about some concerns in other threads about protecting photos (and possibly movies) on your computer from kids, computer repair techs, IT staff, etc. Most people assume that an external drive is the best or the only solution. While this can be effective, it is not free and can be cumbersome. We use a free open source utility called TrueCrypt. It is available for Windows XP/Vista, Mac OS X and Linux. You can download everything you need from this web site:

TrueCrypt - Free Open-Source On-The-Fly Disk Encryption Software for Windows Vista/XP, Mac OS X and Linux

This software supports the strongest encryption available today and is updated frequently. It is ideal for hiding sensitive files and is very secure. It also works with external devices and drives for added security. Check it out!

I'm going to go and check this out. We been using SD media cards and keep all my nudie pic on them and keep them in a secured place. I also keep important files on my cards just far a back up.

[jjtrindc]

Great thread. I was just warning folks about IT folks in another posting! Question for the techies here. Program looks great, but seems to encrypt entire drives. Probably more than I need. Any suggestions on encrypting/password protecting individual folders and/or files? Thanks!

[2insandiego4u]

Originally Posted by jjtrindc

Great thread. I was just warning folks about IT folks in another posting! Question for the techies here. Program looks great, but seems to encrypt entire drives. Probably more than I need. Any suggestions on encrypting/password protecting individual folders and/or files? Thanks!

It will encrypt just part of a drive. You can specify how many Gigabytes you want to encrypt and it will create a virtual drive that size on your hard drive. Once you open up the virtual drive with the password, you can drag and drop files to/from it. One of the best features is the "plausible deniability" feature. You can actually create an encrypted volume INSIDE the first encrypted volume. If someone forces you to reveal the password, for example a court order, your private files are still protected inside the second hidden volume. Some versions of Windows XP (Pro) and Vista (Business and Ultimate) can create encrypted folders, but frankly we don't trust anything from Microsoft. You can also use WinRAR (WinRAR archiver, a powerful tool to process RAR and ZIP files) to encrypt individual files and folders, but it is not nearly as secure as TrueCrypt's encryption.

[magnum]

Originally Posted by 2insandiego4u

We've been reading about some concerns in other threads about protecting photos (and possibly movies) on your computer from kids, computer repair techs, IT staff, etc. Most people assume that an external drive is the best or the only solution. While this can be effective, it is not free and can be cumbersome. We use a free open source utility called TrueCrypt. It is available for Windows XP/Vista, Mac OS X and Linux. You can download everything you need from this web site:

TrueCrypt - Free Open-Source On-The-Fly Disk Encryption Software for Windows Vista/XP, Mac OS X and Linux

This software supports the strongest encryption available today and is updated frequently. It is ideal for hiding sensitive files and is very secure. It also works with external devices and drives for added security. Check it out!

Thank you for sharing the info. I am not super tech savey and am always looking for an esay safe way to save/hide all the photos from play dates.

Cheers Magnum

[alphaplaycpl]

This is great info - thank you so much! Does anyone know how to completely erase the history of recently visited websites? Does "clearing history" and deleting files get rid of it all?

[2insandiego4u]

Originally Posted by alphaplaycpl

This is great info - thank you so much! Does anyone know how to completely erase the history of recently visited websites? Does "clearing history" and deleting files get rid of it all?

The best advice we can give regarding privacy and web surfing is to use the Firefox web browser. You can set it to automatically delete all history, cookies, etc. every time you exit the browser. You can get it here:

Firefox web browser | Faster, more secure, & customizable

This will suffice for most people. For ultimate privacy you can use a proxy server, or the Torpark/xB proxy browser. Here are some links of interest:

XeroBank Browser - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

XeroBank Introduction

Anonymouse.org

Most search engine companies actually save search query data along with IP addresses. The U.S. Government has forced Google and other companies to turn over this data on request. Their interest is mainly in terrorism and child porn activities -- for now. The bottom line is that these searches are all being saved and archived, and will be accessible by god knows who (and for what purpose) in the future. This may sound very "big brotherish" and a bit paranoid to some, so draw your own conclusions.

[JustMrJ]

There is actually quite a bit of good freeware and opensource tools for doing just what you are asking "clearing your browser history".

I personally like to use "Sandboxie" in conjunction with Firefox for my browsing, not only can I completely clear the 'sandbox' when I'm done, it keeps the browser or websites from modifying files on my computer. Sometimes I run software installs in Sandboxie so I can see what files it tries to change or add.

Hope that helps.

[2insandiego4u]

Originally Posted by JustMrJ

There is actually quite a bit of good freeware and opensource tools for doing just what you are asking "clearing your browser history".

Another good one is CCleaner, here's the link:

CCleaner - Home

It works for both Internet Explorer and Firefox.

[dgdc]

We use a program called Kruptos 2 to encrypt the pics (you can select which files to encrypt). Works quite well. Once our kids got old enough to start nosing around the computer, we started encrypting the pics. We did not want them to see those pics of Mommy...

Welcome to Kruptos 2

[2insandiego4u]

Originally Posted by dgdc

We use a program called Kruptos 2 to encrypt the pics (you can select which files to encrypt). Works quite well. Once our kids got old enough to start nosing around the computer, we started encrypting the pics. We did not want them to see those pics of Mommy...

Welcome to Kruptos 2

Looks good, but no Vista support.