Protecting your thumb drive

How many thumb drives (jump drives, usb drives) do you have? Where are they? What is on them?

Thumb drives are a great tool for dragging stuff back and forth between different computers, but since they are so easy to use, most people end up putting all sorts of stuff on them that could be trouble if it fell into the wrong hands. I can't tell you how many times someone has handed me one of these usb drives with something on it I need and when I open it up, this person's entire life is on this little device.... files like creditcard_numb.doc, passwords.doc, adobe_serial_numbers.doc, banking.doc, and clientlist.doc are all sitting right on the top level of the drive.

Fortunately for these trusting souls, I am honest, but if they ever left the drive sitting in a Starbucks somewhere, how much damage could someone do to your life with all that info you carry around on there? It's a pretty scary thought.

And while many people take advantage of password protecting files like these, that is only good to deter the causal snooper... it will do nothing to prevent a committed crook from accessing your data.

Here is a video that shows how to break a Microsoft Word password in less than two minutes.

Here are the results of a Google search for "break ms password" Page after page of hacks and software to break into any MS document. Feeling concerned?

I've even met people who take pride in not having any personal info in their laptop, "In case it gets stolen," but keep all this data on a little jump drive. To me, this makes little sense since it is much easier to keep track of your laptop (I bet you know excactly where it is right now) vs. one or more little usb thumb drives (as you pat your pockets and look in your laptop bag.)

Here is what I would suggest...

A. Keep only what you need on your jump drive. After you have moved something from one machine to the other, delete the files. Just because you purchased a 2GB jump drive doesn't mean you have to keep 2GB of stuff on it.

B. Encrypt the drive so that is unreadable. I really like Knox which allows you create "vaults" on your jump drive or on portions of your hard drive. It uses Apple's File Vault for the encryption so it is Mac native, very secure (and works on both 10.4 and 10.5.)

Since it is a Mac-only program, if someone sticks it in their PC and tries to get anything off of it, they are not going to have any luck, but when you use Knox, it also installs the app on the jump drive its self so that when you plug it into another Mac that doesn't have Knox installed, it will automatically run the program so you can unlock the vault with the password.

You can turn the entire drive into a vault or you can just set it up so part of the drive is in the open for transferring files to other people's computer, or getting files from them (but see the next section below about doing that.)

C. Since thumb drives have become incredibly cheap, have one with your data on it, and have a second throw-away one that you only use for moving files back and forth with other computer users. That way, if you forget to get it back, you haven't lost access to your data, you are just out the $10 drive until the next time you see the person.

I find that having a few extras is always a good idea since my son like to pretend they are phones, guns, missles, walkie-talkies or any number of other imaginary items. I have also found a couple of them in odd places like in the sand box in the back yard and in the shower... but no one has come forward to take responsibility for putting them there.

Here are some other options for encryption programs (this is on the Apple website under software downloads in the network and security section.) Make sure anything that you download is compatible with your OS and the hardware you plan to use it with.