I'm an avid user of Gmail and other Google services, but I'm increasingly uncomfortable keeping my entire email history on someone else's servers. Can I keep a week's worth of messages on the server and encrypt everything else? What are some other Gmail privacy compromises?
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posted by ecmendenhall
on Apr 17, 2013 -
7 answers
This envelope with a letter inside was found inside a large decaying bound edition of Shakespeare auf Deutsch in a junk shop in Bushwick that was only apparently open for a few months before disappearing. The letter, postmarked 15 March, 1939 - was sent to Paris by a Mr. Henri Wolf. The contents of the letter appear to be German shorthand. Included was small piece of what looks like code, there's nothing else on the back.
The letter, envelope, postcard, etc in question are at this imgur album. Hivemind: What the hell is this?
posted by The Whelk
on Mar 14, 2013 -
28 answers
How can I electronically send confidential/private information to other people as conveniently but securely as possible?
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posted by Dansaman
on Sep 14, 2012 -
16 answers
I have a program that stores information in a database. Because this program doesn't have an API, any automation has to be done by writing directly to the database. Some of the database columns are encoded, so in order to write into them I need to know the encoding method. Can you help me figure it out? Examples inside.
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posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug
on Jun 21, 2012 -
28 answers
I'm looking for a good Linux distribution to run from a USB stick for virus scanning on Windows computers. Difficulty - these computers have their hard drives encrypted with TrueCrypt.
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posted by charred husk
on Jun 8, 2012 -
8 answers
I'd like to make certain documents at work (mostly PDFs) only openable to logged-in domain members based on group membership. Watermarking with account credentials would be a plus.
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posted by benzenedream
on Apr 17, 2012 -
8 answers
When uploading my files to major cloud services (Microsoft SkyDrive, Google Docs and Google Picasaweb), are they automatically encrypted
before they leave my computer?
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posted by paleyellowwithorange
on Feb 5, 2012 -
9 answers
I'm looking for a forum where I can ask questions about networking, security, coding, operating systems, web design, etc. There are
many of these out there, but I'd like to find a
single community which covers all these topics more or less equally (so it isn't a Linux forum with a small section on BSD, or a coding forum with a small section on networking). I'd like it to be the sort of forum where users stay around for several years as they learn and contribute at different levels, with high literacy and education-to-spam levels. Could I have your recommendations please?
posted by westerly
on Dec 18, 2011 -
9 answers
Espionage/Police Procedural Filter: how do the police, or CIA, or FBI, MI5, MI6, private eyes, or whoever do their job in a world of encryption, cloud storage, and teeny tiny little storage devices?
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posted by Admiral Haddock
on Dec 12, 2011 -
20 answers
After reading through lots of tips and tricks on backing up data on here, I am close to a backup system that really works for me. However, can anyone help me with two things: securing an offsite backup, and backing up a bootcamp partition?
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posted by This_Will_Be_Good
on Sep 27, 2011 -
4 answers
If I wanted banks or companies like LastPass to hire me to be on their security team to make systems safer and to block out hackers, what websites/books/resources should I dive into to go from n00b to pr0 ??
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posted by querty
on Aug 29, 2011 -
7 answers
A number of technology experts have criticized the iPhone's implementation of in-built hardware encryption. Apparently, circumventing it is a trivial matter of docking it to an Ubuntu system and making a drive image. For someone who knows what he is doing, it would take only a few minutes. How secure, however, is the "Erase all Content and Settings" option? If I understand correctly, this works by simply wiping the encryption key thus rendering all data useless to an intruder. More inside.
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posted by Zé Pequeno
on May 15, 2011 -
6 answers
What are the easiest-to-administer alternatives to BitLocker for file or hard drive encryption on a Windows 7 laptop?
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posted by genug
on May 6, 2011 -
5 answers
How do I securely implement a cryptographic challenge-response in software if the software needs my AES key to create the challenge?
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posted by odinsdream
on May 4, 2011 -
12 answers
I’m going to buy a laptop soon that may end up holding sensitive data. I need to make sure that, if it is stolen, it’s nearly impossible to get the data off the hard drive. I’m a newbie at dealing with workstation security and drive encryption, so please talk me through my options and best practices. I’m willing to pay more for a laptop designed for this purpose if that exists.
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posted by Tehhund
on May 3, 2011 -
13 answers
When people attach a "pgp signature key" to their e-mails, what does that do exactly? What is to keep me from copying their pgp key and forging e-mail headers?
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posted by geoff.
on Mar 10, 2011 -
11 answers
I'm tasked with attempting to build a secure virtual appliance. Problem is, I'm trying to stop people from gaining root access to the appliance via single user mode. This leads to a need for disk encryption, any ideas on how to create encrypted disk that wouldn't require someone to put in a password (plug in usb, interact with the boot process) to boot and still be relatively secure?
posted by snuffaluffagus
on Mar 9, 2011 -
9 answers
How can I view an old Microsoft Word document that is password protected, when I cannot remember the password?
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posted by khelvan
on Mar 9, 2011 -
13 answers
I have severe 1Password/Lastpass confusion. Does one supercede the other or are they meant to be used concurrently, in an ideal situation? I'm confused whether they perform the same function or not.
Please help me organize my stuff!
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posted by damiano99
on Feb 10, 2011 -
10 answers
How are passwords stored in systems that require the user to enter specific digits of their password? I am familiar with encryption techniques such as MD5 hashes, but I can't see a way in which a system would store the entire encrypted password, and still be able to authenticate individual characters, unless the password is stored in plain text, which seems unlikely for a bank.
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posted by InsaneRhino
on Jan 31, 2011 -
20 answers
Are HDMI cables a requirement for watching commercial Blu-Ray movies? If I put a Blu-Ray drive in my computer, will I be able to watch Blu-Ray movies on a monitor that is hooked up via some non-HDMI cable? (DVI, VGA, whatever)
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posted by jsturgill
on Jan 27, 2011 -
13 answers
How should a business that's about security set up its own secure communications?
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posted by woot
on Dec 28, 2010 -
15 answers
Have 2 Windows 7 Pro computers. PC1 is my primary workstation, and PC2 I've been using with the TV for WMC/Hulu. I wanted to start using PC2 to backup the data on PC1, but PC2 is always logged in to record tv or play recordings. How do I ensure that data that I backup to PC2 is only visible/modifiable to PC1?
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posted by palionex
on Oct 28, 2010 -
3 answers
I need to password protect a section of the website I built (Mac OS X, Dreamweaver CS4) for my daughter's very small nursery school. Our web host is suggesting we buy a SSL certificate. The information I'm interested in protecting is the names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses of about 60 people - do I go with 128-bit or 256-bit encryption? 256-bit is more than twice the cost of 128.
posted by missuswayne
on Sep 21, 2010 -
21 answers
Has anybody got ZRTP encrypted voice calls working with their own XMPP server?
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posted by gnujunk
on Jul 19, 2010 -
0 answers
The MacFusion project is, for all intents and purposes, dormant. MacFUSE is nearly so. EncFS for OSX appears to have issues with later builds. What other alternatives are there for
file-level (as opposed to block- or filesystem-level) encryption in OSX?
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posted by aberrant
on Jun 13, 2010 -
9 answers
LastPass, the password storage service, says that all encryption occurs on my computer, so that the only way to see the passwords is with my encryption key. Is there a way for someone to prove this, or do we have to take them at their word? If it's the latter, does the incentive for LastPass to tell the truth outweigh the incentive for the alternative?
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posted by Busoni
on Apr 6, 2010 -
12 answers
I figured this crowd would have the answer bookmarked somewhere. There is a specific issue of a web comic that has the story of a guy, who after his first date with a girl, sends her an encrypted note for her to decrypt. They continue to date and despite her asking, he never gives her any decrypting hints. When she finally breaks the code, it's him asking her to marry him.
I thought it was an XKCD comic, but I couldn't find it via Google searches, so perhaps it's another site. My last resort is to go thru each XKCD comic one by one, but if you know what I'm talking about please give me a heads up.
Thanks.
posted by Like the Reef
on Feb 16, 2010 -
5 answers
What is a simple pen-and-paper method of keeping things I am writing in a journal unknown to prying eyes?
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posted by ejfox
on Jan 9, 2010 -
37 answers
Please help me figure out a way to encrypt a folder on my Windows XP machine, and then back it up on various media.
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posted by Rad_Boy
on Nov 20, 2009 -
5 answers
How do I password protect a folder or partition in windows 7 and also not have its contents included in Windows index or Everything.
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posted by libbrichus
on Oct 25, 2009 -
7 answers
What happens to an S/MIME-encrypted email message when the certificate used to encrypt it expires?
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posted by flabdablet
on Aug 13, 2009 -
5 answers
How to I compute safely in dangerous places? Looking for advice on hiding data, protecting accounts, and securing connections.
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posted by Nothing
on Jun 2, 2009 -
25 answers
I'm creating a scavenger hunt for friends and family, and the first step for participants is to figure out what they're looking for through a series of riddles, codes, and puzzles. I'm looking for fun ways to encode or otherwise obfuscate the clues.
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posted by itstheclamsname
on May 22, 2009 -
9 answers
Dual booting Win XP and Win 7 off the same disk... I have already used TrueCrypt to encrypt the primary Win XP Partition. Anything I should know before attempting to do the Win 7 partition? I don't want to mess up any boot loaders.
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posted by yoyoceramic
on Apr 12, 2009 -
2 answers
