FileVault...Who uses it?

Unless you work for the FBI or have something incredibly sensitive, you really don't need FileVault. While the original corruption problems seem to have been quelled, I'm still a bit weary of using it. It's pretty overkill if you don't really need that level of security.

 

I use it on my iBook. Most of the stuff on there is personal, or is work stuff which I have to keep confidential.

 

My dad wanted to use it, but filevault said he would need 34gb space...
He´s got a 60 gb 15" pb4 with 50gb of data in his privat folder...
Anyone knows a solution ?
Thnx

Dave

 

I'd love to use Filevault but its a tad all or nothing for me. I'd like the feature to vault up one folder, not my entire home dir. Why would i want to vault up 7-8gb of vids that i put freely on the internet anyway , i'm more concerned about my business documents...

 

My PowerBook belongs to the University I work at, and they have the right to ask to use it for other functions, now, while this has never happened, I don't want folks snooping my personal stuff while the machine is out of my hands, there's a lot of non-Uni stuff on there, some of which could get me in trouble.

FileVault is a good thing in my book.

 

Put the videos in another folder and stick aliases in your home folder.

 

I tried it on my Powerbook but it really hurts my performance--so I stopped using it.

 

Hurts your performance how? I run it on a 700mhz iBook with 256MB (now 640, but recently 256) and I don't even know it's there...unless I try to import into iMovie. I also run it on my account on my mom's iMac (333 G3, 256MB) and, again, I don't notice it being slow.

 

I used it, but then SideTrack didnt't work for me so that was the end of the line.

 

I don't need to protect my entire home folder. That's overkill. However, whenever I have some specific files I need to password-protect, I use Disk Utility to create an encrypted disk image. It uses 128-bit encryption, just like FileVault, so it works perfectly fine. Just remember not to keychain your password.

 

I have no need for it...plus from the problems of FileVault that I read about in one of the Panther-introductory MacAddict magazines, FileFault seems kind of scary to use if something within FileVault malfunctions. Not to mention, lose your password, and... well, I suppose there are some experienced hackers working on an application to get around that issue.

Besides, I use login with a password, so no need for a second password security.

 

Cos of the problems and glitches it got early on, I intented to wait for the application to mature with a couple of patches before I took the plunge.

But by that time I realised that I probably didn't need it.

So I sit on the Nah side of the fence.

 

I thought with 128 bit encryption that the problem wasn't so much people hacking your stuff, but rather the massive amount of time and computing power it would take to break it. The process isn't that difficult IIRC, but the sheer number of calculations you would have to perform to break the code would take so long that you'd be dead before it finished?

 

I bet you everyone that's told you that it would take more time to crack 128-bit encryp. than it would take for the sun to die off is wrong. I know someone that knows a friend who wrote higher levels of encryption in a few weeks, and would be able to crack through 128-bit in probably much less than two weeks.

But, true, there would be a lot of calculations required to get the code...doing it the hard way. I meant that there might be a way for hackers to get around doing all those calculations and just reset "the right" variable or perform "the right" process to allow open access to FileVault even without the password. I'm not an experienced hacker, so I'm not sure if one would be able to do that anyways.

 

Out of curiosity, what all do you have left to do to acquire the title of "experienced"?

 

Terminal geek should do it.

 

I don't have a Mac but on my PC I use PGP to encrypt individual files; IIRC it has a mac version which I'll (more than likely) end up using. I like it a lot more because not only is it file based; it can be keyed to whatever length you want (I like being excessive for personal pride, even if its just a typed in number, so I use 4096 bit )

 

No, and since there were some SERIOUS issues with it, you shouldn't either... unless you're with NSA or something.

 

I can't understand why Apple is having so many problems implementing this in any fashion that is reliable. Windows has had encrypted file system in NT's File System since Windows 2000. It's easy to turn on and you can specify specific any folder you want.
The only thing I can image is that NTFS is implementing encryption at a lower level then Apple which has less overhead.

 

I like the idea, but am weary of using it. I'm going to run it on my G3 when I get all the data backed up. If it runs w/o problems for a couple months, then I'll migrate the process to the Laptop.

Its really hard to commit to something like filevault on account of its history.

That's what I like about having an older Mac at my disposal though. You Guinea-Pig that one out for the sake of the newer, faster machine. Kinda like a post Gold master beta phase.

 

FileVault has been fixed for a long time.

 

Man... are people still afraid of using filevault. I've been running this thing on my pb since the day 10.3 came out. Sure, I turned it off when I heard about the bugs... But the filevault bugs were resolved long time ago (first patch i think). Ever since that patch, I've been running both my G5 and pb without problems. Extra security can be of benefit on any portable.