Password-protecting fedora.

Maynard Kuona knxmay001 at mail.uct.ac.za
Mon Mar 8 09:14:48 UTC 2004


-----Original Message-----
From: fedora-list-admin at redhat.com [mailto:fedora-list-admin at redhat.com] On
Behalf Of Tom Needs a Hat Mitchell
Sent: Monday, March 08, 2004 10:38 AM
To: fedora-list at redhat.com
Subject: Re: Password-protecting fedora.

On Sun, Mar 07, 2004 at 09:01:20AM +0100, Sturla Holm Hansen wrote:
....> 
> I know about the built-in security, I was just asking if it was possible
> to pw-protect evolution the way I described because then I wouldn't have
> to lock my screen for leaving the computer for a few minutes and I
> wouldn't have to log in with another account when somebody wanted to
> borrow it for something...

One could wrap or modify evolution in a way that locked and required a pass
word.

But I suspect that is not the question.

So what if Evolution was locked or had a working 'lock-me' button.
What would constrain anyone from using Netscape mail, mozilla mail,
bin/mail, sendmail, telnet xxx 25, pine, mutt, elm, Balsa, exmh,
emacs, xemacs, fastmail, innmail mhmail, readmsg, or any of the other
possible mail tools.

Better to lock the desktop.   
--------------------------------------

I definitely think you should not install tings like pine, mutt, mozilla
mail etc, or configure them to access your mail for no reason. Here I access
mail using Evolution when I run Linux. If I am that paranoid about security,
I would not cache mail on my computer, would not save the password
information etc. It is easier and does prevent access by the casual snooper
at your PC. Or if you receive mail on your PC, if you have your own domain,
just create a separate user so that /bin/mail will request a password. So
maybe the idea is that -

1. Create a guest account for people to use on your PC so that they do not
use your account.

2. I 1 is not preferred, create a new users for you mail, and do not receive
important mail in your main account under Linux, that is if you use your
Linux installation as your email domain.

3. Do not cache mail or create offline folders if you use IMAP mail.

4. Do not save password information on your mail program. Uncheck the save
password option.





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