Protect Your Privacy with FileVault

Task #44

Difficulty Level 3

If you are sharing your Macintosh with others, you may be concerned about securing the files in your Home folder against prying eyes. Panther has added a new feature called FileVault, which protects your Home folder by encrypting its contents.

Before you can turn on FileVault protection for your account, the FileVault master password must be set by an Admin-level user (see task #24 for more information).

Caution

If you forget your login account password and an Admin-level user cannot provide the correct master password, the contents of your Home folder are lost permanently; the encryption cannot be removed without one of these passwords.

Caution

Make sure that you have closed any open documents before you enable FileVault protection so that you do not lose any changes.