How safe is it to store personal financial info and files on a Mac?

best practice is to store such information in an encrypted form.
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1578 explains how to make an encrypted disk image. Witch is a great place to store information.

Don't leave the image mounted when not in use. When you mount an encrypted disk image it will ask for your password. There will be an option to have the computer remember the password. Do no check this.

use a strong password, but a password you can remember.
the password should be unique. Never give out your password. A password can be up to 32 characters in length. At the very minimum the password should be at least 8 characters. the password should be a mix of letters and numbers. DON'T use a real word.

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1578 is step by step instructions to create an encrypted disk image. a disk image is a file that works like a flash drive. by double clicking on the file. a new drive pops up. you can copy file to the new drive as you would a flash drive. By simply dragging the files onto the drive.

The government stores your IRS, SSN, your licenses, finger prints all online. Banks store all your finical information on computers. But safe is a relative term. that's kind of like asking is your house safe.

Hi,

depending on who else has access to your Mac and whether or not you take the mac with you when you leave your house, it might be best to use an encryption app for these data.
So in case your Mac gets stolen or lost, nobody can read these sensitive informations.

Quite a lot can be found at MAcUpdate http://www.macupdate.com/macintel.php

Personally I don't use such an app so I can't recommend one.

Regards

Stefan

Hi There,

Personally I use the built in keychain for storing passwords, the keychain app can be found in /Applications/Utilities, I highly recommend creating a new keychain with a password which is different to that of your login. New keychains can be created by selecting File >> New Keychain...

For storing files and important documents I use secure disk images which can be created by Disk Utility in the Utilities folder. Encrypted disk images can be created by selecting File >> New >> Blank Disk Image and selecting 128 or 256 bit encryption in the create Disk Image window.

Hope this helps
J.C

JazzmanJohn wrote:
No one else uses my computers.
First of all, is it safe to put all this stuff on my computer?

It's all relative. It's safe most of the time. However, how safe is it if the computer is stolen? The login password...if you set it in the first place...only works when the machine is booted from the system it's on. If someone steals your Mac and boots it in Target Disk Mode they can see all unencrypted files, same goes if they take the hard drive out and put it in an enclosure or drive dock to mount it from another computer.

There is also a small chance that at some point there may be Trojan Horse malware that scans your hard drive for info it wants and scoops up anything from mounted disks.

I myself do what the others have suggested. I put my most sensitive personal/financial data in an encrypted disk image I created with Disk Utility and put a strong password on it. The image stays unmounted by default, so nothing can get in there without me knowing about it. The password to it is not stored in the Keychain. If my Mac is stolen the thief won't be able to get into the disk image. I made the disk image as large as a CD (under 650MB) so that it could easily be archived to CDs in encrypted form.

I also made it a "sparse" disk image so that Time Machine could back it up in pieces instead of the whole 650MB each time.

There's no "guarantee" as to how safe your information is going to be. Adding password protection to your computer log-in helps (but as aforementioned, there are ways around this). Encrypting important files is another way to add security. Overall, your information should be fairly safe as long as you minimize the risk of theft and don't share your password with anyone. Think of passwords and encryption as a secondary line of defense.

Storing sensitive information is as safe as storing it in written form that can be stolen. As noted already, make sure sensitive information is encrypted, using at least 128 bit encryption. Use strong passwords, at least 12 characters with a mix of upper and lower case letters, at least one number, at least one special character (the shift-number characters), and non-plain text or dictionary words. Watch your system performance for any indication of intrusion or unaccounted for network or hard disk activity.

There is no such thing as absolute security, the object is to make data access as difficult as possible. And do make things easy like leaving a laptop unattended or easily accessible to a thief.

JazzmanJohn wrote:
In general, if I set my Mac so a password is needed to unlock it after booting, sleeping and using the screensaver, how safe is it?

I answered that one in my first paragraph. The account password you set on your Mac is respected by the OS that contains the account. Therefore if you access the disk *in any other way* that bypasses the regular boot OS, like taking the disk out, or booting your computer in disk mode so that a different computer is running the show, the files are there for all to see.

The exception would be if you turned on FileVault, which would automatically encrypt all your home folder data. That would secure the contents of your account. But I and others still don't completely trust it or want the performance hit involved.

I solved the whole thing with SplashID. It's encrypted, password-protected and syncs with my iPhone so I always have passwords and account information with me. I tried the password-protected DMG route for a while, but got annoyed with it and I never seemed to have my laptop with me when I needed a password. SplashID (http://splashdata.com/splashid/index.asp) isn't free, but it has worked very well for me for a couple of years.

You could also check out [1Password|http://agilewebsolutions.com/products/1Password/whats_new]. It costs $40, but it is definitely worth the money.

It doesn't look like SplashID solves the problem at all. It seems to store passwords, but it doesn't seem to encrypt any files that aren't already encrypted.