Time Machine security

What do you mean by security, encryption? (home folder)?

 

Having a password on your account doesn't protect your files in any way. All someone needs to do is plug your internal HD into an enclosure or drive dock and all your files will show up, and again, an OS install disc can reset your password and let them straight in on your computer. The only way around this is FileVault, but the data corruption risks involved don't bear thinking about.

My advice is to use something along the lines of PGP to protect particular files and leave everything else.

 

time machine data is protected by the Root permission. you cant delete or restore a file without providing you password and it must be in the Time Machine UI or in the Terminal. also you cant do anything to the Time Machine data while in the Finder.

 

I don't think you are right. I just looked and the files on my Time machine backup drive. They have permissions set just the same as before they were backed up. If one user could not read the other's files before they can't read them on the backup drive either.

However if you have physical access to the device then anything short of encryption will not be good enough.

 

I don't have Leopard yet, so I don't really know how Time Machine works, but could you aim TM at a disk image? If that were the case you could store your backups on a password protected encrypted disk image.