I recently read an article on MacWorld regarding securing your mac so that it’s out of harms way to other users. The primary piece of information to pull from this article is creating administrator accounts for administration only. What does that mean? When you first setup your computer you had to create an account that provided administrator privileges. Administrator privileges allow a user to install, change or delate anything on the their mac. Now, MacWorld advises that you should create an additional account that does not allow administrator privledges. This means they advise handling your day to day activities as a non administrative user. I tend to slightly disagree that you must extend your security this far…

If you read on in the article they address “password prompts”. This is the only method that I choose to utilize. NOTE: This totally depends on your situation and the type of user you are. I personally have two accounts on my machine; “admin” and “guest” (hardly ever using the guest). I always work logged in as the admin. I do this because I’m constantly installing, changing and deleting files from my machine. Having to log in and out of an admin account can become time consuming and really a waste of time. This article originally caught my eye as I am one of those picky individuals who has to have their setup the right way and their desk neat and organized and I have never been a fan of having others play on my machine (unless its the girlfriend of course). I spend a lot of time on it and it is a very valuable possession of mine thus I treat it a certain way. So how do I always operate as the admin but still protect my machine from other users that may be in my apartment while I’m away? Password Prompts!

Basically the key to this is disabling automatic login in the system preferences and set it so that the computer requires a password to wake from sleep or the screen saver. Now, anyone sitting down to the computer will have to enter a password. Seeing as how only two people know mine and it changes often I’m usually in the clear. Try it out by following the steps below:

First, open your system preferences.

Then click on Security. Within that window select the System tab and be sure to check “Require password to wake this computer from sleep or screen saver and “Disable automatic login”

Thats it! You’re all set! Anyone attempting to turn your computer on and or wake it from sleep/screen saver must know your password. Again, I choose to operate this way as I’m often updating my system with new applications and changing settings. If you’re a beginner and don’t see yourself constantly managing your machine as some do, then creating a non-administrative account may be for you. MacWorld suggests that using the administrator account as normal day-to-day use is risky as it makes it easier to mistakenly delete or change critical aspects of your computers operation.

Personally, I think if you’re spending a significant amount of money on your machine you would dedicate a little time to learning what some of those “critical components” might be. This is however, my personal opinion and if you are truly scared that you could mess something up by accident MacWorld’s article does do a good job at explaining how to setup a non-administrative account.

Are you picky with others using your machine? What steps do you take to protect your machine from other users?

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 16th, 2007 at 6:37 pm and is filed under Apple, How-To, Workflow. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.