Hide files & theft recovery?

have Macbook, 10.6.8 Leopard, i back up on external HD. always concerned about loss & theft.

***is there a good method or product for 'hiding' files on laptop? is Password Protection or Firmware Password good enough?

***theft recovery...Undercover, Lojack For Laptops, Prey, any others? cost is not an issue. pros & cons?

thank you very much, kurt

A firmware password will prevent a thief from accessing data on your MacBook or even changing out the hard drive, and booting from the optical drive. However, on older MacBooks like yours, it can be circumvented. On new machines it can not. You can also use FileVault to encrypt the data on your MacBook but that will not prevent a thief from swapping out the hard drive. As far as theft recovery software is concerned, you can do the searching with Google and compare them. One note of caution... any protection you implement such as a firmware password or FileVault is only good if you keep the password(s) in a safe place. Forget or lose a password, your MacBook is toast.

My strategy has been simply to never have the MacBook Pro out of my sight when I am not at home. It does not get packed in checked luggage, it travels with me. If I'm at a cafe using the MBP and want to use the washroom, I pack up the unit and take it with me. On those rare occasions where I have to step away from it (but not completely out of sight), I mouse down to the lower left corner, which triggers a requirement to re-enter the login password (this is also required when restarting).

I'm aware that this would not stop a fleet-footed thief from dashing away with the unit, though there would generally be lots of witnesses if that happened, and I can activate Find My Mac quickly enough on another device that I could "lock it down" before a thief could get into it, even if they wanted to (chats with police on this topic indicate that few common thieves give a whit about your data; they want the machine to resell for cash). I could do more, like use Filevault or an Open Firmware password, but as it is never out of my sight and I'm not in circumstances where I often fear for its safety, I don't.

ksplitt said:

have Macbook, 10.6.8 Leopard, i back up on external HD. always concerned about loss & theft.

Click to expand...

One more thing: if you are as concerned about security as you say, you should really update that machine to a modern operating system version.

A encrypted dmg folder will do the job, easily created with Disk Utility free and flexible.


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