Passwords & Security -- Protecting my Mac from the genius bar

Question

Level 1

4 points

Passwords & Security -- Protecting my Mac from the genius bar

Hi there. I am turning in my mac to the Genius Bar for some general maintenance and I want to make my private content and passwords as secure as possible. Could someone help me with any of the following?

1. My login is password protected, but they'll need the password. That will also then give them access to my "keychain". Is there any other way to further secure my keychain?

2. My Firefox is set to automatically log-in to certain websites (e.g. email, social networking sites), but I can't figure out how to disable that. Thoughts?

3. Any other tips on securing my private data and passwords before handing over my mac? I'm going to back-up and move all my important docs off the computer and onto an external drive before submitting the mac.

Thanks!!

MacBook, Mac OS X (10.5.5)

Posted on Dec 23, 2010 5:13 AM

Reply

Answer 1

coffeecoffee Author

Level 1

4 points

Dec 23, 2010 5:17 AM in response to coffeecoffee

Sorry -- Please disregard #2 below. I've figured that out. But any general tips or thoughts on the keychain question would be much appreciated!

Reply

Answer 2

Barney-15E

Level 10

122,276 points

Dec 23, 2010 5:20 AM in response to coffeecoffee

You can set a different password for you keychain in Keychain Access. When you get the Mac back, you can reset the password to the same password as your login password.

I don't know about Firefox. It uses its own password manager, so you'll have to find a Firefox user. I think there is a capability to use a Master Password, but I don't know how to set it up or if it will do what you want.

Reply

Answer 3

coffeecoffee Author

Level 1

4 points

Dec 23, 2010 5:52 AM in response to coffeecoffee

Thanks! Ok, I've figured out #1 and #2 above. Any tips on best practices for securing my data generally before giving them my machine?

Reply

Answer 4

Dec 23, 2010 6:24 AM in response to coffeecoffee

coffeecoffee wrote:
Thanks! Ok, I've figured out #1 and #2 above. Any tips on best practices for securing my data generally before giving them my machine?

It is unlikely that they want access to your private data, but to protect yourself just delete it After you back it all up. Then when you get your computer back restore the data from the backup.

Reply

Answer 5

thomas_r.

Level 7

32,031 points

Dec 23, 2010 8:11 AM in response to coffeecoffee

The only thing you can do to protect your data against a knowledgeable person in possession of your machine is to encrypt it. Although you can do that with FileVault, I don't recommend that (it causes more problems than it solves IMHO). Use something else to encrypt your sensitive data (keychain is secure, as would be encrypted disk images made with Disk Utility).

Also, once you've got sensitive stuff encrypted, create a second admin account and give the Apple techs access to that. They could still reset the password on your original admin account, or could access your stuff using the Terminal and the "sudo" command, but neither will give them access to your keychain.

Reply

Answer 6

Király

Level 6

10,025 points

Dec 23, 2010 11:32 AM in response to coffeecoffee

Make them another admin user account to use, and give them the password for that account. Your keychain in your original account is already encrypted, and they won't be able to decrypt it without that account's password.

If you are sending your Mac in for hardware maintenance, I would completely erase the hard drive first before sending it in; and then you won't need to worry about data security. After you get it back, restore all your data from backups. A bootable backup made with SuperDuper, oran Carbon Copy Cloner onto external hard drive will work well and will be very easy to restore.

Reply