Poll: How many people use Hard Drive Encryption?

[50words]

Also I understand encryption if you are an employee or if you have sensitive information on your laptop, like client information. I'm a college student and the only things that I work on my laptop are class projects and papers. I do not seen these as sensitive enough documents. Let me know what you guys think.

I also encrypt my personal files, which include financial information (like my Moneydance and GnuCash files), letters regarding various matters, scans of important documents, etc.

[capink]

I don't get the point of encrypting the whole HD. It is enough to encrypt the partitions containing private data. But encrypting the root partition? what is the point?

Also I would imagine that encrypting drives using truecrypt is good choice since it enable you to access it from windows too.

[Polygon]

if someone steals your laptop and you have potential personal information, like credit card numbers, registration emails from a bunch of sites, etc etc, then your data is safe.

[hyper_ch]

I don't get the point of encrypting the whole HD. It is enough to encrypt the partitions containing private data. But encrypting the root partition? what is the point?

You don't encrypt your SWAP?

[AegisTalons]

What exactly are "containers" that you guys have referenced earlier? Also why would you encrypt your swap partition? Do you need to setup encryption when you are setting up Ubuntu or can you do it after?

I'm running a dual boot system XP and Ubuntu. I need XP for a few programs that don't run in Ubuntu or under Wine. So if I run software to encrypt the HD, which partitions would I encrypt: /root, /home, swap, XP?

As for email encryption, how do you get other people to run encryption so it actually is effective communication?

[hyper_ch]

well, think of containers as created large files that are encrypted... once "uncrypted" you can store other files in there... if you then unmount it you'll only see the encrypted container again..

well, swap is a partition and stuff that is put to swap, will be written to that partition... it may not be kept in momery but as long as the physical blocks aren't overwritten again, the data is still there.

You can encrypt your system also afterwards. What you want to encrypt is up to you. If you do want to encrypt, then it's also good to encrypt swap.

There's not automated encryption for email as it normally works on public/private key. If you want to encrypt an email to somebody, you will need to get this person's public key. With that you can then encrypt the message and he can, with his private key decrypt it.

[AegisTalons]

So if I have my /home partition, I would have to create a "container" on the /home partition and encrypt it. I place data I want to keep encrypted into this "container". Do you have to actually mount it or do you have it mount automatically when Ubuntu loads, or is that program specific?

As for the email, I understand the ideas with the encryption with the public and private keys but my question is if the people that you communicate with do not use encryption, how do you convince them to run encryption?

[hyper_ch]

well, you either encrypt a full partition - which can then be made usable during boot - or you use some diskspace, create a file as big as you want the desired containter to be and then you have a containter that you could transfer to a usb pen drive for example and within that container you store the files.

If you want to encrypt an essential part of your linux files system you'll have to create a whole partition for encryption (like for the /home folder)... well, you could also have a default /home and then once booted use a containter that will be mounted there... I think there's somewhere a howto here.

Well, that's up to you on how you convince them to use encryption. I say it's a matter of privacy. It's not hard to encrypt - once properly setup.

[50words]

The TrueCrypt website will answer most of your questions. A TrueCrypt container is just a file that you can mount as if it were a drive (in Windows) or a folder, just like you would mount anything else in Linux.

I prefer containers because you can back them up in encrypted form just by copying the unmounted container file. If you encrypt a full partition, you would have to use PING or some other imager to get an encrypted backup, or else also encrypt your backup drive, which gets slow and needlessly complicated.

Containers are just more versatile, in my opinion.

[Xbehave]

I don't get the point of encrypting the whole HD. It is enough to encrypt the partitions containing private data. But encrypting the root partition? what is the point?

Also I would imagine that encrypting drives using truecrypt is good choice since it enable you to access it from windows too.

By encrypting root i know my root is the same as it was last time i used it (although since ive managed to block liveCD attacks i suppose i dont need it on my laptop but too late now).
By encrypting /tmp and swap i keep them safe at no cost (ubuntu hibernation decides to log me out so with kde im up and running faster from a clean boot)
im not sure why i encrypt home

I suppose all my encryption is just because its easy and this way if i ever do have sensitive data i dont need to do anything, and if my laptops stolen without my password its a brick and i cant lose any private data!