Privacy

[Robert Graham Merkel]

On Wed, Mar 10, 2004 at 07:21:18PM -0800, Jim Woodruff wrote:
> My computer is accessed by the entire family and my kids friends.
> Is there a way to password gnucash or its data files? I've searched
> the help files and man pages without success.
> 
There is no mechanism *within gnucash* to do so, but you can give
yourself varying levels of protection against snoopers using facilities
on the system.

I'm assuming that you are using Linux or a BSD - for Mac OSX the same 
facilities exist but I'm not familiar with the GUI tools used to 
manipulate this.

The simplest way is to ensure all users have their own
password-protected accounts on the system, and change the permissions 
on your gnucash data file so that only you have access.  In Debian,
you can add user accounts with the adduser command - other distributions may
have GUI tools for this purpose.  You can change the file permissions 
using "chmod" from the command-line, or by using the GNOME or KDE
file managers.  You should probably create user accounts (and maybe a
guest account for friends) anyway.

Another alternative is to keep your gnucash data file on something like 
a USB key and keep the USB key in a secure place!

If you want to be extra paranoid, you could save your GnuCash data to 
an encrypted file system.  Read the CryptoLoop HOWTO (there's a copy 
at linux.com I think) if you want to go to this level.

-- 
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                                           Robert Merkel
                                     robert.merkel at benambra.org
                                        http://benambra.org

"Socrates, he's like the Vince McMahon of philosophy"
-- "Road Trip"
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