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Ask HN: Do you encrypt your laptop's hard disk?

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Re: Ask HN: Do you encrypt your laptop's hard disk?

#21

Post by paolomaffei »

bobds wrote: post #19
paolomaffei wrote: post #15

Not meaning to be a jackass but realize that maybe if you downloaded (and maybe already deleted!) that porn video with that girl that might or not might be 18 you could be in big troubles if you don't have your full disk encrypted. Edit: or other things that would be ok but can be used against you by law enforcement, for example what about your collection of pirated MP3s or DivX? Is this more acceptable than accident…

An encrypted disk could also get you in a position where you have to give up your password. Be careful with your porn-filled encrypted hard drive.

Not in every country, not in Italy for sure. Anyway truecrypt-like systems gives you plausible deniability since you can have a "decoy" system.

Fortunately that is not my case but I can't say I don't have any MP3s of DivXs that aren't, err, properly licensed.

Edit: or cracked software, we have very high fines in Italy for using softwares without a license.

I'm just saying that in case the police have a look to your laptop and they WANT you to charge with something, they will.

Re: Ask HN: Do you encrypt your laptop's hard disk?

#22

Post by fragmede »

Linux - dm-crypt. If I could, I'd make full-disk encryption mandatory for all business use laptops. I work for a smaller shop, so a developer or two usually ends up going to a trade show.

With full source and a build environment for our product on their laptop. That makes me paranoid about loosing a laptop in the chaos of a trade show, while our booth is surrounded by our competitors.

Re: Ask HN: Do you encrypt your laptop's hard disk?

#23

Post by patrik »

Since most of my life exists in one way or another on my hard disk, I consider it to be an absolute must to encrypt the drives.

I’m using PGP Whole Disk Encryption http://www.pgp.com/products/wholediskencryption/index.html, which works perfectly. I prefer it over OS X’s FileVault feature since it just protects everything and is completely transparent to the system and the user.

And, btw, I’m still hoping for a mobile OS besides BlackBerry’s that provides a reasonable secure encryption option.

Re: Ask HN: Do you encrypt your laptop's hard disk?

#24

Post by paolomaffei »

paolomaffei wrote: post #15

Not meaning to be a jackass but realize that maybe if you downloaded (and maybe already deleted!) that porn video with that girl that might or not might be 18 you could be in big troubles if you don't have your full disk encrypted. Edit: or other things that would be ok but can be used against you by law enforcement, for example what about your collection of pirated MP3s or DivX? Is this more acceptable than accident…

Also, I remember I have read an article about some guy that had some pics of their little childrens sometimes naked in an "innocent" way on a trip.

They had their children taken away because they went to a photo shop to have the film developed and the clerk called the police.

Re: Ask HN: Do you encrypt your laptop's hard disk?

#25

Post by math »

A related tip: I use a True Crypt (file) volume to store all my personal stuff, in particular a scanned version of everything ever sent to me in the post (tax stuff, bank stuff). I highly recommend this practice (scanning everything to an encrypted volume). The files stay organised - unlike my paper records ever did. It's trivial to have a complete copy of you're personal files at work... which can come in remarkably handy and of course it's secure and backing up is easy (just copy the file).

Re: Ask HN: Do you encrypt your laptop's hard disk?

#26

Post by jeremy82 »

As a semi-professional nude photographer I have encrypted every hard disk I own, including my laptop's. It's part of my promise to the customers to keep their photos really safe. I am using Ubuntu and LuKs on all my machines because I find it very convenient to have a superb encryption mechanism built in.

As a side note, I do all my picture editing in Gimp. While this is not commom among professional photographers, it contributes in some ways to my landmark style.

Re: Ask HN: Do you encrypt your laptop's hard disk?

#28

Post by dotBen »

patrik wrote: post #23

Since most of my life exists in one way or another on my hard disk, I consider it to be an absolute must to encrypt the drives. I’m using PGP Whole Disk Encryption http://www.pgp.com/products/wholediskencryption/index.html , which works perfectly. I prefer it over OS X’s FileVault feature since it just protects everything and is completely transparent to the system and the user. And, btw, I’m still hoping for a mobil…

I'm weighing up going down this route - what kind of performance hit do you experience form using PGP WDE on your Mac? Thanks

Re: Ask HN: Do you encrypt your laptop's hard disk?

#30

Post by Cockbrand »

thibaut_barrere wrote: post #12

Yes I do (since a few months): - http://agilewebsolutions.com/knox (one vault per client) on Mac OS X, including all db data if any - http://agilewebsolutions.com/products/1Password for all small-sized sensitive data (eg: production access, passwords etc), with an automated crypted backup I'm looking for a reliable and as seamless solution for Windows at my pace (not a big need). Something I'm also looking at is a wa…

There's a "securely erase free space" feature in Disk Utility, which does crash on me when I use it though, making a reboot necessary. Otherwise, you might simply use a one-liner like

dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/free_space_eater; rm /tmp/free_space_eater

This overwrites all unused space on the disk with zeroes. You'll temporarily run out of free diskspace with either option, so it's a good idea to do this when you're not working on your computer.

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