Hiding naughty photos on my computer?

[SoiledCowboy]

Renaming files, "protected folders" and "stealth" etc is really only suitable for total amateurs that would not be competent to navigate themselves around your hard-drive - imho you need to use an encryption program that creates an encrypted volume (just enter your password and it shows up as just another drive on the system), you then seamlessy work with that volume(drive) just like your hard-drive, painless and with massive security for all your types of files. I have been using the program "Bestcrypt" for some years now and can recommend it highly, but there are similiar type programs to be found at any good shareware site to interest you, have a look at what's on offer under the Utilities/Encryption/Security section.

[Guest]

Man dont ever keep stuff on your computer! If you have anything at all to do with beastiality, child porn, or if it even appears the girls are young, and someone sees it, the chances of being dobbed in are very high. You will definitely get a visit from the police with a warrant, and your computer/s and associated gear will be confiscated, if you are charged and found guilty you will never see your gear again.

 

You might have surfed the net or had stuff sent to you from a yahoo group or similar and not realise what you have on the drive, dont laugh plenty of people have no idea about accepting files or attachments to group email. End result you are still fucked, deleting it is no use, the minimum you can do is Fdisk and format, reload everything again, the police have great software and programmers working for them to extract anything that might be lingering on the drive.

 

 

 

Burn it on a cd, copy it to something portable, buy yourself a USB pendrive, its the best method of carrying data discretely.

 

 

 

DONT try to hide it!!!

[SoiledCowboy]

Where is the security there? - Copying files to storage devices and then carrying them around with you as supposed protection is just ludicrious. There are many, many valid reasons for encrypting data for high-security purposes - people use pc's for other reasons than collecting porn off the 'net and encryption provides the means of security for whatever your needs are - data, business files, financial records and even porno. A high level of PC (hard-disc) security can be achieved by the average user quite painlessly and speedily by following established methods.

 

Encrytion is not "hiding" stuff, like a childs game.

[Guest]

thanks for all the replies, I'm a computing amateur and so can't be fussed with all the elaborate disc partition, high end encryption stuff, also i don't have anything that would bother the police so I'm not worried from that point of view.

 

 

 

all i want is something simple to allow me to password protect a folder so that my computer illiterate girlfriend/relatives can't get in

 

 

 

i liked the .zip file idea but it sounds like to much hassle getting access to the hidden files again

 

 

 

if i can't find a program that allows password protection of individual folders maybe i'll paste the pictures into a password protected word file or else i might set up a new user on the windows XP login page and keep all my sensitive stuff uinder that name which will then need a password for viewing

 

 

 

how does that sound? would it be easy for someone with moderate-advanced computing knowledge to easily crack that?

 

 

[walletss]

I had reason to remove my pics from my laptop whilst it was undergoing some repairs. I just saved everything on compact flash ram. Those cards are the size of credit cards and you have backup just in case your hard drive fails. I cant think of anything more discreet than that.

[adikgede]

The protection offered by using W2K NTFS seems like it would be more than adequate for your needs, i.e. keeping a casual user away. The method that DB mentioned should also be quite easy with Winzip. If I am not mistaken once you have a password protected archive you can just drag and drop files to it. Steghide works quite well and is available free of charge for W32 and Unix if you want steganographic encryption, they also have pretty good documentation at their site: http://steghide.sourceforge.net

[ALHOLK]

Hi!

 

 

 

I dont no enough about the NTFS encryption algoritm to tell you how safe it is. Encrypted word documents are supposed to be rather easy to crack. There are programs available on net that will do this. Zip files are slightly more difficult as long as you dont use a password found in a common dictionary or a short password that can be cracked with a brute force cracker.

 

 

 

As previous posts have indicated it all depends on who you are hiding the files for.

 

 

 

Hiding:

 

 

 

You can not hide a file from someone with advanced knowledge of computers. If it is there they will find it. For less advanced users it depends on their level of knowledge. Setting the hidden attribut would be sufficient for a computer illiterate but not for anyone else.

 

 

 

Encryption:

 

 

 

Weak encryption will probably work for the average user but most teenage hackers can break it. Strong encryption works for all but government agencies with super computers and very strong encryption is virtually unbreakable.

 

 

 

The downside of encryption is that even if it is unbreakable it is visible. E.g. an inquisitive girlfriend with no computer knowledge can still say - "Show me what's in the file or I'm out of here".

 

 

 

regards

 

 

 

ALHOLK

 

 

 

P.S. A couple of years ago the UK was discussing a legislation that made it illegal to withhold an encryption key from the authorities. I don't know if it passed though.

 

 

[Guest]

"P.S. A couple of years ago the UK was discussing a legislation that made it illegal to withhold an encryption key from the authorities. I don't know if it passed though. "

 

 

 

I think it did pass, along with a provision that requires all ISPs to install traffic monitors on their servers, at their expense.

 

 

 

But, how can the police force someone to divulge their encryption passphrase? Anyone can just say "I forgot it." That is perfectly plausible: ask any tech support person what the most common problem is they get from users, and they will tell you it's "I forgot my password."

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Guest]

"...deleting it is no use, the minimum you can do is Fdisk and format, reload everything again, the police have great software and programmers working for them to extract anything that might be lingering on the drive. "

 

 

 

Actually there are wipe utilities that will pulverize any "deleted" files on your drive, by multiple writes over the data. I understand guys at the FBI still have a means of recovering data by physically examining the disk, but you'd have to be suspected of a *serious* crime (e.g. espionage) to cause them to go to that extreme.

 

 

 

See: http://www.gregorybraun.com/CleanUp.html

 

 

 

IMO, the bigger risk is the "pagefile". Anything you have ever viewed on your machine is potentially in the pagefile, and can be easily recovered. There is no way to "edit" the pagefile and remove things, and you have no control on what goes into the pagefile and what doesn't. The only way to get rid of its contents is to delete it, then wipe it. The utility at the URL below has an option to delete the pagefile on every boot.

 

 

 

http://www.jermar.com/tweaki.htm

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[SoiledCowboy]

Correct about the pagefile (or swapfile) holding just about all your activities of late, passwords, piccies, nanaplaza posts etc hehe. Bestcrypyt (latest version) has a function to encrypt the pagefile to 448bit Blowfish during normal operation - also if you are using an older 95/98 operating system there is a very handy utility out there called, funnily enough, Swap File Overwriter that overwrites the swapfile several times over etc on shutdown.

 

Just also as I'm rabbitting on, the FBI etc use what is called Bit Stream Decoder to lift data from the physical structure of a hard-disc, without booting it, and this prevents start-up proggies wiping data/tracks etc and means that copies can be worked on without destroying the source data. Oh, and wiping (overwriting) a hard-drive by the standard Military-Grade of seven passes is good enough for nuclear-warfare equipped military planes,ships etc then I guess then that is probably ok for the rest of us - do you remember that US aircraft a little while back that had to emergency land in China was it, it fell from the sky rather rapidly, the crew followed insructions for hard-drive data destruction and apparently the Chinese could not get a thing off it of use, as was the idea.