It can go on by using recovery softwares to gather a list of softwares that once were installed on the computer but have been deleted by the user. In the end they have access to almost everything if you did not take the necessary measures to make sure that no one is able to access sensitive data.

Protecting your data is essential these days and even if some of you would call me paranoid I think everyone should do it. But, how would one do that ?

This is actually easier than you would have thought. My suggestion would be to use encryption to protect the data. This does mean however that the user has to enter a code to decrypt the data before he can use it which is far better than handing the data on a silver plate to everyone who has physical access to the computer.

Just follow the easy steps outlined below to secure your computer:

Download and install True Crypt on your system. True Crypt is able to encrypt hard drives and partitions with a secure key. I would suggest to use either an external hard drive or make space on a internal hard drive. It is far better to encrypt the complete hard drive.

Be aware that you need at least one unencrypted partition to be able to boot your operating system.

Encrypt the hard drive. I outlined the process in an earlier article called Create a secure data safe with True Crypt.
Now the important part. Move all your sensitive applications to that encrypted partition. I’m thinking of email clients, browsers, p2p applications, ftp programs, documents, pictures, videos and everything else that you do not want to share with anyone.
Make sure you change the data paths in the applications as well. It would not help if you use the email client from the encrypted hard drive but have the mailboxes on an unencrypted one. Move them all to the encrypted hard drive as well.
No one is able to access that data unless they provide the key to decrypt the hard drive. It is theoretically possible to break the algorithm or use brute force. The later would take ages if you use a key with more than 40+ chars.

Other measures that you should undertake could be to clean the caches on exit and using a software like Eraser to regularly delete information about former files on unused disk space.

Do you have additional ideas or methods that you use to protect your data ?

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Steganos Locknote is a standalone program which does not have to be installed and adds itself to the encrypted text file to make it possible to decrypt the file without the main program. You either write text in the main window or drag and drop files with the .txt extension into it. Once you are done you provide a password (choose a secure one) and Steganos Locknote creates a executable which contains the information.

Decrypting the file could not be easier. Everyone who is clicking the executable has to provide the password that was chosen during the encryption. A correct password displays the contents, a wrong one of course nothing at all. The only aspect of the software that I do not like is the fact that it only encrypts text files. It does not support word documents for instance or images which would be a great plus.

Still it is small, free and easy to use. If you are like me and use text files to store important information you should give Steganos Locknote a try.

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Click ok and you are ready to use the program using the context menu. Right click a file that you want to encrypt and select Send to / Click Crypt.
A dialog appears and you have to enter a password twice for the file that you want to encrypt. The option at the bottom deletes the file after it is encrypted, so uncheck it if you want to keep that file. Hit ok and the file will be encrypted using your password and the algorithm you´ve chosen.
If you want to decrypt the file you simply doubleclick it and enter the password in the windows that appears. That means, if you send this file to someone else he needs clickcrypt installed on his system and of course the password.

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