Privacy On The Hard Drive

[Seaman]

Great information as usual! Thank you. I am looking to protect primarily photos (relatively large files) so the TrueCrypt and PGP make sense for me.

Where do I find the international version of PGP and, will I create a problem for myself if I get it while residing in the US?

PGP can be found at http://www.pgpi.org/ . You might consider going for GPGpg instead; http://www.gnupg.org/. Looks like the pgp international version is not updated recently. GNU Privacy guard is an open source project, so you can check if there is a general key for it

Normally you would not get into trouble for using this in the States.

[RichiBoone]

Great information as usual! Thank you. I am looking to protect primarily photos (relatively large files) so the TrueCrypt and PGP make sense for me.

Where do I find the international version of PGP and, will I create a problem for myself if I get it while residing in the US?

[Jackson]

TrueCrypt can create files that act like encrypted volumes on a hard drive. It's open source and free. About a zillion options so it looks complicated but in practice it's safe to just ignore 99% of them.

http://www.truecrypt.org/

I would 2nd this recommendation. Ever since I heard the Irina story, I've used truecrypt to encrypt all my data files and photos on my laptop and my home computer.

For anyone who have been procrastinating in doing this: Just do it. Believe me, you'll feel a lot more at ease traveling with your laptop knowing that if it's stolen, the thieves won't be able to read any of your data or see your personal photos.

Thanks,

Jackson

[Easy Go]

TrueCrypt can create files that act like encrypted volumes on a hard drive. It's open source and free. About a zillion options so it looks complicated but in practice it's safe to just ignore 99% of them.

http://www.truecrypt.org/

[StrayLight]

What, pray tell, are the PGP suite applications and are any operational fees attached?

http://www.pgp.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy

[Jackpot]

What, pray tell, are the PGP suite applications and are any operational fees attached?

Thanks,

Jackpot

[Seaman]

What I would recommend is to get a 4GB memory stick with U3 capabilities of Sandisk. One of the included programs is a program you are looking for. It will make the whole stick unreadable unless the right password is entered. Another great thing about U3 is that you can install your favorite applications on it, which will run from the stick. So if you would install your mail client on the stick or your browser, then all the files will be on the (unreadable) stick. Good for keeping things private.

The nice thing is that you do not need to install anything on the host computer. The moment you plug it in the USB port it shows up as a CD drive and a removable drive. The removable drive is unreadable without the correct password

For a normal hard drive I would recommend looking into the PGP suite of software. Get the PGP international version so you know for sure that there is not one "masterkey" which will open all files.

[RichiBoone]

Can anyone recommend a "for dummies" software to "enmausoleum" files, folders and drives? (I use that incorrect word so it does not attract undue attention.) You can figure out the other word for mausoleum and substitute it.