My computer needs work. How can I block access to viewing my email & still give them login to system access?
I have to give a friend access to login to Windows 10 on my laptop to do some work on it. How can I password protect them from launching Thunderbird and reading my emails?
Gekose oplossing
Thunderbird separates the program installation and the user data, including your mail. The latter is called the Thunderbird profile, containing all your data. Uninstalling Thunderbird won't touch your profile. Even though it's not that easily accessible, but when you give away your computer, all your data would still be on disk, and it could be read be anyone having access to the computer. So uninstalling the application is completely useless as long as your profile still exists.
If you'd simply erase the profile, while mail would survive on the IMAP server (assuming your account really is an IMAP account), other data like address book, or filter settings would be lost.
You can backup the profile prior to deleting it, and restore it once you got your computer back.
So this is going to be a trade off between your privacy concerns, and your technical ability to backup and restore your data if you choose to erase the profile prior to giving away your computer. What's your choice?
Lees dié antwoord in konteks 👍 1All Replies (3)
I'm pretty kindergarden when it comes to computers, but what if I just simply uninstall Thunderbird and use my email on gmail web interface until I get it back? My thinking is that they sync to each other anyways, so I could just re-install when my computer returns and be right back up to date. Would that work for keeping someone out of my email while working on my computer?
Gekose oplossing
Thunderbird separates the program installation and the user data, including your mail. The latter is called the Thunderbird profile, containing all your data. Uninstalling Thunderbird won't touch your profile. Even though it's not that easily accessible, but when you give away your computer, all your data would still be on disk, and it could be read be anyone having access to the computer. So uninstalling the application is completely useless as long as your profile still exists.
If you'd simply erase the profile, while mail would survive on the IMAP server (assuming your account really is an IMAP account), other data like address book, or filter settings would be lost.
You can backup the profile prior to deleting it, and restore it once you got your computer back.
So this is going to be a trade off between your privacy concerns, and your technical ability to backup and restore your data if you choose to erase the profile prior to giving away your computer. What's your choice?