Windows Vista - Best way to protect "secret" files from being unseen

I live on my computer, so therefore I put a lot of secret information on it (passwords, personal documents, etc.) I'm concerned that people that are part of my network (at work, or at home) may navigate to my folder structure and see some of these files.

I've foolishly tried removing the "Everyone" Windows security group from seeing my "secret" files (and found out that I myself was part of the "Everyone" group, lol) What is the best way to hide/protect my files from people navigating to them when I'm connected to a network?

contactmatt

Posted 2011-07-22T13:31:12.410

Reputation: 989

Answers

First, you should be able to add your own account to the security, and then remove Everyone. Do not use the DENY attribute on any group you belong to. You will be back asking how to undo that.

That would probably do 99.99% of the job, if you REALLY want to be safe, you could encrypt your files.

KCotreau

Posted 2011-07-22T13:31:12.410

Reputation: 24 985

Lol, I already did deny myself and asked :P http://superuser.com/questions/312867/is-there-anyway-to-remove-denied-permissions-from-a-group-for-a-folder-if-i-dont

– contactmatt – 2011-07-22T15:23:52.840

The 'Everyone' group is a system group....is there any side-effects from removing a system group from a folder structure? – contactmatt – 2011-07-22T15:24:15.397

As long as the folder isn't being regularly accessed :) Just create the folder somewhere sort of out of the way. Turn off "inherit permissions". Then create another folder inside of that. Should be good. This is really a hack way of storing stuff though and only will stop amateur non technical folks. Anyone can use "take ownership" and override your settings on that folder. . . – surfasb – 2011-07-22T21:48:33.683

There is no "Everyone" in use for my directory structure at all. – KCotreau – 2011-07-22T23:20:53.290

I had the same issue, but i found the safest way was to stick all of it on a memory stick and use TrueCrypt to protect it.

admintech

Posted 2011-07-22T13:31:12.410

Reputation: 6 970

3Even if you don't want to use a memory stick, TrueCrypt is still the best way to go. You can just name the TrueCrypt volume file as something inconspicuous (like a system file) or a data file as part of another application. For further protection, you can also mark the file with the hidden and system attributes to prevent it from showing up in Explorer (you will need to remember the fully qualified path to it). – Breakthrough – 2011-07-22T13:45:39.983