OS X Hiding...

[drawerfixer]

When I was surfing the Living forum, some poor soul had his 25 gigs of porn discovered, and is being blackmailed with it.

While I have nothing close to this amout (50 MB), I am still worried about discovery. I'm running a 1 Ghz iMac on OS X Jaguar. I'm the sole user of this computer, and thus am always logged on. Occasionally my dad comes upstairs and installs a proggy or does some work on my computer, and I'd be in the doghouse if he found it. My question is the best way to hide this data. It's buried within some folders, but not far. Is there a way I can make the porn folder invisible, require a password everytime accessed, or should I simply burn it all to a CD?

[juanvaldes]

make a porn user account and keep it all over there.

make the file invisable (add a . in the folder name)

check macupdate / versiontracker I'm sure someone has a simple folder lockdown app or something.

[cheerios]

if you wanna be ubercool and use terminal, here are some things that'll help:

when you open a terminal window by default you start in your home folder. this is the same one as you see in finder when you click the House icon.

to make a hidden directory: type mkdir .namehere
so long as the directory is preceeded with a ., it is hidden. that means that you will NOT BE ABLE TO ACCESS IT VIA FINDER. lets call our hidden directory .porn. why not.

to make sure it's there type ls -a That's the command to list contents of hte current directory INCLUDING hidden files and directories.

to move pictures into the folder type mv /current/path/to/picture/porn.jpg ~/.porn/porn.jpg
that's the move command. it does just that. moves the file from it's current position, to the one you dictate. the ~ symbol means "my home folder"

to access your hidden porn: cd into your .porn folder,
cd .porn (cd stands for change directory, by the way)
type open porn.jpg
and it'll open it w/ preview unless your default app is different.

I dunno how scary this sounds to ya, if it's too much, ignore me, 'cuz this is the geeky way to go about it. It won't keep unix-proficient people out of your pics, if they know to look for them, but it'll keep snoopy parents who dont' really understand how the comp works. good luck!

also check these out. one may be what you're lookin' for
http://macupdate.com/search.php?keyw...x=0&button.y=0

[juanvaldes]

Or you could use the "Go to folder" command in the Go menu (shift-command-G)

[cheerios]

I didn't know about that one.
thanks, dear :P

[macmanmike6100]

a great program was Secret Folder in OS9. It's now on X: <a href="http://download.com.com/3000-2271-10204947.html?tag=lst-0-3">Secret Folder OS X</a>. I don't use it in X, though, because I don't let anybody use my comp when in my user name. You might want to create a separate user account for your dad. If that's too suspicious, I think that this prog is the best way to go.

Let us know what you do!

[THE MAC GOD]

Shoot in os9 i used to use RESEDIT... it was nice... all you would do is say 'get file/folder info' and pick whatever it was you wanted and it would open a properties box. In there you could click all kind of things including invisible. Actually, you can run resedit in classic mode and do it that way. its easy and fast...
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macos/417

[philzilla]

or: open .porn

that opens it as a Finder window

[bodypainter]

Don't be too surprised if, years from now, you find out your dad knew about it all along.

I'm 46 & my dad is pushing 80. Over the last 25 years I've found out more and more that he knew when I thought he didn't.

And ain't it amazing how much smarter your parents become as you get older yourself?

[Realizm]

It's worse when you're finding your Parent's porn collection on the computer..

[THE MAC GOD]

SHOOT... my parents warned me that they would get smarted as I got older... hate it when they are right...