Ubuntu for Non-Geeks, 4th Edition

Project 19B: Encrypting Your Files

Protecting yourself against Internet nasties is all well and good, but what if someone gains physical access to your computer? Data theft is a serious business, so if you have any sensitive files, you should think about protecting them. A good way of doing this is to encrypt your sensitive files. Encryption is a way of taking a file and scrambling it in such a way that only a person with the right decryption key will be able to recover the original information. If someone tries to look at the file while it's still encrypted, all they will be able to see is a bunch of nonsense characters.

19B-1: Creating an Encrypted File Folder

Ubuntu has a nice way of encrypting files, but you should take care when using it! The ...