Milovana.com

Amazingly my wife suggested that I take some risque photos of her and I'm trying to figure out the best way to keep anyone from accidently seeing them. Would they be safe left on the computer in a password protected folder or should I put them on an encripted flash drive.

Thanks for any help!

A password protected .rar archive is a good choice. Provided you archive it with a modern version of the rar archive format and you use a secure password that can't be discovered through a brute force method of attack, you should be okay. This generally means using a password that is non-dictionary in original and a combination of lower/uppcase letters, numbers, and special characters.

Is your computer hosting anything on the internet?
If not, it's probably quite safe just on your computer.

How many people have access to your computer? just you and your fiance? any roommates? friends? buddies?
Is the computer password protected? If not, or there's a risk of others getting onto it, then yeah, you might want to take extra precautions.

I have my computer password protected. Any personal files are stored in unshared drives on the computer. Perfectly safe unless I start downloading crazy crap that puts spyware and malware on my computer :)

If you want a bit more protection, you can drop it in a password protected zip file, however, be aware that anyone can see the internal file names without needing a password (and hacking a zip file isn't rocket science either, so anyone determined enough could crack it). That's assuming they:
a) got access to your computer (in your house - friend, relative, etc)
b) got access to your account (knows or guesses your password, or no password protection)
c) manages to stumble across the file (don't name it "personal risque files" or "Nude pics of my fiance" O_o)
d) has time to copy it / email it to themselves.
e) has the desire to screw you over.

Big list of ifs ...

Nothing stored electronically is 100% safe. Keep that in mind first and foremost.

However, if you're concerned about external intrusion (especially via the internet), then 'd say if you put them on a memory card or on a USB thumb drive, or some kind of other external storage (Burn to disc, portable harddrive, etc) and stash it in a secure location, you should be good.

If you're additionally concerned about local access, where someone might snatch the storage medium, then lock it in a safe or some such.

You CAN get military secure USB thumb drives that, if multiple attemtps to break the password fail, it self-destructs the data on the device and/or renders the device useless permanently.

Someone posted on this site a little while ago about a program called TrueCrypt. Very cool program that will allow you to create an encrypted drive partition that you can specify the size of folder. I use it to keep all the files that I dont want anyone, especially in my household, aka kids, getting into. Might be worth checking out.

Or
You could send them to me for
Safe keeping.


That was a joke.

Only effective method is a Faraday cage.
An air gap is great; but not 100%.

Ditto wrote: If you want a bit more protection, you can drop it in a password protected zip file, however, be aware that anyone can see the internal file names without needing a password (and hacking a zip file isn't rocket science either, so anyone determined enough could crack it).

I would recommend 7zip files, you can use a stong encryption like AES-256 an you can encrypt the filenames to.

a password to rar archives is picked in a minute.

Who are you worried is going to get at them?

I covered this here


            Hide Your Most Private Files in a Secret Encrypted Volume

Thank you all for your advice!

We still have one child at home and even if we didn't she'd still be thinking that if, God forbid, something happened to us they would be found. Right now I'm thinking I'll password protect a file, either rar or 7zip and put them on my main computer. I may at some point get an external drive, password protected and put them on there.

Thanks again!

Nezhul wrote:a password to rar archives is picked in a minute.

Source? The password cracking programs I have seen for .rar all rely on either an exploit in the older rar compression tool or on simple and/or short passwords.

well I won't search right now because I don't have a favourite program. All I know that up till now I could crack any rar by downloading simple tools from the net.
I don't think they ended up with a military-level encryption somehow.