Mail, Address Book, and iCal password protection

Hi,

Is there a way to password protect Mail, Address Book and iCal?

I would like the programs to prompt me for a password upon opening them (something like M$ Outlook's password to open outlook).

I am not talking about my password to retrieve new email, I want a password that prevents from accessing the mail (contacts, and calendars) that are already on the mac.

I don't consider the MAC OS login password to be sufficient as it can easily be reset.

I am thinking filevault would probably work, but I think that is overkill (to encrypt the entire home directory). This actually brings up another question. Is is possible to have filevault only encrypt certain (selected) folders?

Thanks.

helpmhost said:

Hi,

Is there a way to password protect Mail, Address Book and iCal?

I would like the programs to prompt me for a password upon opening them (something like M$ Outlook's password to open outlook).

I am not talking about my password to retrieve new email, I want a password that prevents from accessing the mail (contacts, and calendars) that are already on the mac.

I don't consider the MAC OS login password to be sufficient as it can easily be reset.

I am thinking filevault would probably work, but I think that is overkill (to encrypt the entire home directory). This actually brings up another question. Is is possible to have filevault only encrypt certain (selected) folders?

Thanks.

Click to expand...

I use this for my itunes and iphoto. I have pictures that I do NOT want just anyone seeing and I dont want to have to set up a new account so I just use this program.. it works great but its a bit expensive. Its called padlock.

http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/29476

Thanks for the reply.

Padlock seems to only password protect the application itself. I would like to password protect the data (the contacts, email, and calendars).

With padlock, they may not be able to open the application, but they could still copy the address book, mail directory, and calendars to another mac and then access the data.

Please correct me if I am wrong about padlock.

Does anyone have any other suggestions?

Thanks.

I see what you are saying, i missread your post.. try this one its called "data guardian"

http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/30728

you could also just go to www.versiontracker.com or www.macupdate.com and search "password data" or "password protect" and there will be a ton of options.

That is a password manager. It would not help for protecting my email or calendar.

My original post was asking whether the mac programs (iCal, mail, and Address Book) could protect their data (the way M$ Outlook) does. That is why I did not search for programs that could simply encrypt data.

I guess the answer to my question is that the mac programs can't do it.

Thanks for your help.

well seeing as that I am no help what-so-ever on this topic I am going to close my mouth and let someone else give you some suggestions.. Im pretty sure there is a way to do it.

sorry I could not be of more help.

Your post did help quite a bit. I now know that to do it I will need a 3rd party program.

Also, the padlock program looks really neat. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

For anyone else out there who may want to do this, here is a make-shift solution:
Use macgpg (or a similar type program), to encrypt you address book, calendar files, and mail folder.

You could then create a script that encrypts the folder and then securely deletes the original. Create another script that decrypts it (it would obviously ask for a password).

This is a very rough workaround because you have to "manually" encrypt the data after you close the program and decrypt the data before you can use it. You would also have to wait for this to be done.

It also does not protect your data while you are using it (someone could copy the data while it is unencrypted).

Someone gave me this link.
It seems like it may work.

http://www.macgeekery.com/hacks/software/how_to_encrypt_just_mails_messages

helpful program

Well I was on the same page as you intill I found this program called Espionage. It will lock any program or folder that you can choose heres a link to where you can download it from Apple - Downloads - Networking & Security - Espionage hope this helps!!!!!