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dynamicd

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jul 16, 2002
271
8
Chicago
I live in a dorm and a lot of the guys find it amusing to go on someone's computer and screw around with the system setting and load up a bunch of gay porn onto the computer. Is there anyway to have a login and password required to log onto the computer or something to protect my computer from people messing around with it? Thanks

p.s. My computer has gone untouched mainly b/c people are scared of my mac b/c they don't really know how to use it. It would be nice to have a safety precaution though.
 
Re: Login and Password

Originally posted by dynamicd
I live in a dorm and a lot of the guys find it amusing to go on someone's computer and screw around with the system setting and load up a bunch of gay porn onto the computer. Is there anyway to have a login and password required to log onto the computer or something to protect my computer from people messing around with it? Thanks

p.s. My computer has gone untouched mainly b/c people are scared of my mac b/c they don't really know how to use it. It would be nice to have a safety precaution though.

Of course there is, but methods vary depending on OS... What OS are you running???
 
I'm running osx, newest version. Sorry, this is my first mac. I'm still learning everything.
 
all you need to do is turn off automatic login, in the System Preferences and make sure your username has a password. then you can log off your computer with shift command q.

Another option is a screen effects password so you set the screensaver by clicking a hot spot and then you can make it require your password. Either way your data is reaosnalby secure.
 
yea but if you dont want to log out every time you can also go to the applications folder and launch "keychain" if it isnt in the applications folder check the utilities folder. go ahead and launch keychain....once open go to the view menu and select "show status in menu bar". this will put a pad lock icon in your menu bar. click on this padlock and go to "lock screen". your computer will now go into screensaver mode and will need a password to get back to the desktop.

p.s. how do you like your mac compared to the pc's that youve owned? assuming that you use to use pc's.
 
I couldn't be more happy with my imac. My roommate is always complaining about his pc and it crashes at least two or three times a day. I think I've finally convinced him to switch to an apple for his next buy. The only thing I wish apple made is a two-button mouse. Not having kazaa is also quite a let-down but I've gotten quite used to using other file-sharing clients. I don't think I'll ever switch back.
 
Something else you can do is enable the Screen Saver Password, and set your enable time to 5 minutes, that way you can walk away and not worry about it.
 
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