My New Mac, Snow Leopard Edition, 2nd Edition

Chapter 53. Encrypting Your Data

The safest way to protect your data is to lock your computer behind closed doors. The second safest way to protect your data is to use encryption.

Encryption scrambles your data and password-protects it—to read the data, you must type the correct password. As long as you're the only one who knows your password, you'll be the only person who can read encrypted files.

Note

If you encrypt data with a password and forget that password, you'll never be able to read that data ever again. If you encrypt data with a simple password that's easy to guess (such as 123 or PASSWORD), an intruder could guess your password and access your data. Your data is only as safe as your password.

Project goal: Learn to encrypt the data on ...