So, you like to watch some torrid videos from time to time, but you don’t want other people seeing what you do? You’re in luck. This topic is my expertise, and I’m batting a thousand so far. I’m going to give you the low-down on how to best hide your tracks on a Mac.
1. Use Different Accounts
This is the easiest tip of them all. In System Preferences, go to the Accounts pane, and set up a new PASSWORDED account. If you’re the only one using this account, nobody is going to stumble onto your stash by accident. Be warned, if someone else has an Admin account, they could look through your non-encrypted data.
2. Lock Your Computer
Don’t forget to lock your computer when you step away! If you’ve enabled fast user switching, you can click the icon in the menubar, and then select Login Window. This will keep you logged in, but nobody can get to your desktop without a password.
If that is too much work, you can have your computer lock itself every time it goes to a screensaver. In the Security pane of System Preferences, check the Require Password box. Then, choose Immediately in the drop-down menu.
3. Use Private Browsing
For the love of god, PLEASE utilize Private Browsing. This will save you much embarrassment. Slowly, every web browser is implementing this system, but Safari was the first to the party. To enable it in Safari, click the Safari button in the menu bar, and then hold down the Option Key while you click Private Browsing.
4. Monitor Your Cookies
Okay, but what if you forgot to use Private Browsing? There will most likely be cookies for the sites that you visited. That is bad for business. You should monitor what cookies are on your system. That is accomplished in Safari by pressing the Show Cookies button in the Security pane of the preferences. You can then use the search bar to narrow down the displayed cookies to only the ones you’re looking for in there.
5. Store Your Video In Encrypted Disk Images
I wrote up a whole guide about how to accomplish this. Here is the link for your convenience.
6. Empty Your Trash
After hearing many, many stories about people getting caught, this is the second most common place you can screw up. (The first being the browser.) When you toss something in the Trash, MAKE SURE TO EMPTY IT! Even if people aren’t snooping, they’ll stumble into your Trash. You don’t want any kind of embarrassing dirty laundry in there, eh?
7. Don’t Display Recently Viewed Media
Most people don’t even think about this, but it can lead to massive blushing. OS X automatically displays recent applications, files, and servers that you have used. Luckily, turning this off is easy as pie. In System Preferences, go to the Appearance pane, and then change all three drop-down menus in the Number of recent items area to “None.”
Photo Credit: Hryck.
