When your kids know as much about Macs as you do, keeping your stuff safe can be incredibly difficult—but it isn’t impossible. Software such as WatchMac ($19.95, bloo7.com/apps/watchmac) can let you know about authentication failures such as somebody trying to guess your password, while Parents Remote ($39.95, subrosasoft.com) even enables you to spy on the kids to see what they’re up to.
We’d rather outsmart our kids than spy on them, however, and there are plenty of ways to do that. Apple’s own Firmware Password Utility can prevent simple tricks that your kids might try to bypass the parental controls you’ve so diligently created. And changing your router’s DNS provider from your ISP to OpenDNS (free, opendns.com) allows you to filter web content to screen out inappropriate content. Alternatively, Internet Security Barrier ($79.95, intego.com) delivers an excellent set of per-account filtering tools, though it
isn’t cheap.
You can protect sensitive data by hiding it or encrypting it. Secret Folder ($24.99, apimac.com/secretfolder) makes hiding folders easy, while Apple’s own FileVault takes care of the latter option. To enable FileVault, go to System Preferences > Security > FileVault and click the Turn On FileVault option to encrypt and password-protect your entire home folder. Be aware, though, that by switching on FileVault, you lose the ability to recover individual files in Time Machine.
Lastly, you can create a new, encrypted disk image on your Mac, on an external disk, or on a USB flash drive in Apple’s Disk Utility to stash your stuff. Another option, Knox ($34.99, agilebits.com), lets you create, access and Spotlight-search multiple “vaults.” If you want to encrypt files and access them on other platforms such as Windows, the cross-platform TrueCrypt (free, truecrypt.org) is the way to go.
You can control Time Machine from System Preferences > Time Machine. Select your hard disk (or network volume) and use Options to specify which folders don’t need backing up. We skip Applications, Downloads, and Library to keep things speedy.
If you or your little darlings delete or damage an important file or folder, you can go back to when your file was intact. Open the folder where the intact file used to be, then run Applications > Time Machine to travel back in time.
Time Machine keeps hourly, daily, and weekly backups (depending on how much disk space is available). Click on the arrows to move backward in time until your file appears, then Control-click on it and select the Restore option to bring it back.
Protect your ports—children aren’t always gentle when trying to plug in gear. Choosing wireless peripherals or using an external USB hub can keep precious USB ports safe.
Parental Controls automatically records the sites your children visited, any websites that were blocked, apps they ran, and whom they’ve been chatting with.
To make the web safe for younger children, restrict what websites very young children can see by creating a list of age-appropriate sites in Parental Controls > Web.
If your Mac has been a single-user Mac, you might have automatic login enabled. Remember to disable it if you’re creating separate accounts for everyone.
