Making Folders and Files Private

Question

Can someone please help me figure out how to lock specific folders/files on my laptop? I understand how to use the access privileges, but this not what I am trying to accomplish. I want to keep my laptop unrestricted (I do not want to use a password to access my laptop), but at the same time I would like to keep some personal information private, so it cannot be accessed by anyone at any time without a password. Is there a way to accomplish this?

Answer 1

You could prevent Spotlight from indexing the contents of the files by renaming them with an extension that no mdimporter parses. But this (& changing the extension back to open it yourself) is a hassle & does not prevent Spotlight from finding the file, just from searching its contents. Together with Spotlight's new abilities to easily build complex searches, it would not be hard to design a search to reveal the files.
But this is not the only reason hiding files in unusual locations is not a good idea. An obvious one is that you (or someone else, since the computer can be used by anyone) might delete it by accident. Another is that it requires some knowledge of safe locations, file system structures, etc.
Mostly though, it is just a very weak form of security that relies on someone else's lack of curiosity to be effective.