Good concept.
But,,,,
The implementation is a bit obfuscated for most users here.
(Most here are not very good nerds; hey, they're my friends; love them)
Anyway, I believe in paranoia. It's basically a good thing. (Even without the belief, the threat can still exist; you know ?)
Back to reality, this can be accomplished much more effectively with existing commercial, share-ware, and free-ware programs.
I suggest that anyone who really wants to feel better about restricting access to their data (and if you don't these days, you aren't very smart) should join up with and become familiar with the workings of a couple of the massive shareware respositories which exist on the web.
I will not list my favorite repository sites here, because within 6 months they will be out-classed by some other sites, and I will probably change to those sites. Alvin Toffler would love the internet.
To find such sites, use your favorite search facility (yahoo has come roaring back against Google as of 2003, or so their marketing hypsters want me to believe) and type in a sentence or question something like this...
<I>
Find me sites that have a lot of freeware and shareware programs
</I>
Try a few out and pick the one that makes the most sense. (Each one of them is better than all of the others, just read their hype pages)
The magic words to search are...
<I>
Encrypt
Encryption
Secure
Security
File Maintenence
Disk Management
Privacy
Info Safety
</I>
Try the available freeware and shareware apps, and give your files a little protection. Just by using simple 40-bit encryption (somewhat old-fashioned low-tech stuff by today's crypto standards) you will eliminate 99% of all your worries. There are some more advanced schemes that will take that number to something like 99.999%,,, i.e., you'll have to antagonize federal authorities at the super-crooks level to get the attention needed to break those codes. (I am convinced at this time that the Feds aren't very interested in most members of this gang; nor should they be.)
But do be aware; to the best of my knowledge, almost every encryption scheme can be (and already has been) broken by the Feds. (They use more than software; tricky stuff beyond my brain.)
Bottom line, you <I> can </I> put an inexpensive (often free) level of protection on your "secret files" and be relatively certain (99%, etc.) that your in-laws/et.al. aren't going to get ahold of them.
