How can I protect my email files on my HD?

[Stefan1966]

Dear All,

I just noticed that for example a Forensic Investigators can make a copy of my harddrive of my macbook pro and with that they have access to my data and my email. Using that image on another mac they can change my password to a new on an extracting the information.

Even using FileVault does not realy help as there is a way to run through the terminal and have onetime access to the data.

Question:

Does anybody know how I can protect my email files properly on my harddrive?

Thanks for your help

Stefan

 

[HDFan]

Even using FileVault does not realy help as there is a way to run through the terminal and have onetime access to the data.

Please elaborate. What's your source?

 

[Stefan1966]

Background: we needed to run a forensic investigation on one of my colleges. These guys come in, plugged on a external HD drive and took a copy of the computer‘s image without knowing the macs password. After that they were able to extract and read his emails.

First I was surprised that you can have acess to a mac without the password, but once you google you find out that you can boot the mac in a way that you can avoid the password and reset it. By taking the image first and transferring the image to another computer the original user does not notice that the password was changed.

 

[Longkeg]

Yes. If someone has physical access to your computer, Mac or PC, bad things can happen. Hard drives can be cloned or worse yet, whole machines can be taken. You’re surprised by this? That’s why doors have locks on them. You could try various encryption tools to make it difficult to open and read your documents but if “they,” and by “they” I mean shadowy governmental entities with unlimited resources, want to see your email they will. But really why would anyone go to the trouble of cloning a hard drive when the things you’re worried about can easily be accomplished (by “them”) over the internet. A true “expectation of privacy” seems to have gone the way of chivalry.