[MLUG] Ubuntu encrypted private folder

[Jeremy]

Andre Courchesne - Consultant wrote:
> Hi,
>
>    I am looking at using the following to protect some sensitive data on my laptop:
>
> 	https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EncryptedPrivateDirectory
>
>    Anyone played with it and can tell me how safe it is tu use? By safe I do noe 
> mean secure, I mean safe in the way "Is there a possibility I loose my data of 
> something becomes corrupted?"
>
>    Thanks,
>
> Andre
>   
It "works" - except for one little thing that may be a showstopper for
some: "Filenames and directory names will not be encrypted". If you look
in your .Private dir, you will see the structure and names of encrypted
files.

In terms of data safety, they detail a recovery procedure, and I see no
more chance of it getting corrupt than anything else on the drive. Of
course, you have the possibility of losing your passphrase... Keep
backups :)

There are better ways of doing it, in terms of encryption, but not in
terms of user-friendliness. If you want to do it yourself, check out
pam-mount and cryptfs or some combo like that. Encfs also works well for
userland, and truecrypt is user-friendly, but is not in repos due to
license (afaik).

Jeremy