How to Hide Porn on Your Windows PC
This article is about how to hide porn on your computer. The most subtle souls among you can replace the word “porn” with “important files,” and the same basic techniques will still apply. For everyone else, the real conversation is: hiding porn files on your PC isn’t very difficult, with the caveat that you can never keep them away from someone who’s really dedicated to figuring out what’s stored on your computer.
If this is your scenario, perhaps store all your secrets on a USB stick instead and hide them somewhere where no one can find them. Otherwise, there are two general approaches to hiding data on your system: keep people out of your PC in the first place, or hide the data so that someone using your computer cannot read (or find) it. We’ll cover both approaches in this tutorial.
How to lock your computer so no one can view your files
In theory, having a very strong authentication system to log into your computer could allow you to be a lot lazier about hiding files. If no one can get into your system, it makes sense that you can leave any “important” files right in a folder on your desktop, no matter what you care. Obviously, this isn’t the most complete way to hide files on your PC, but it does share the difference between convenience and hiding.
The first line of defense is a strong password for your desktop or laptop PC – one that you don’t use anywhere else, and one that you are willing to change on a semi-regular basis if you live in a shared space with other people. While it is unlikely that another person in your home or apartment will ever guess or otherwise extract the specified password, using the same login for many years only increases the likelihood.
I would n’t use a handy PIN to sign in to your Windows PC. While this makes it much easier to enter multiple numbers instead of 20 characters, it’s just asking someone to figure out your username. Likewise, I wouldn’t use Windows 10’s dynamic lock feature, which opens your system whenever a Bluetooth-paired device is within reach. No no no. Even the password with the picture makes me a little ” Hmmm”, like in “Geralt of Rivia ” by Henry Cavill.
Use a long and annoyingly complex password . Or better yet, set up Windows Hello based authentication, which uses your face or fingerprint to sign in. You can also try the Windows 10 Security Key variant, which requires you to plug in your USB device while entering your password. or PIN.
This should be all you need to keep people from logging into your computer, but I still don’t recommend leaving your porn scattered all over your desktop. You don’t have to go to extraordinary lengths to hide it if you’ve actually locked your system, but you should still assume that someone might someday be able to see what’s on your desktop.
This reminds me. Make sure you have configured Windows 10 to require authentication when it wakes up from hibernation (via Settings> Accounts> Login Options ), and make sure you have enabled “Show login screen when resumed” in Settings screen saver:
Thus, someone will be prompted to log into your system, if they are busy with it, while you’re away after you’ve logged in. You don’t need to go to these few extreme measures if you are hard on locking your system when you leave to do something else (Windows Key + L!) , But all it takes is one moment of forgetting to inadvertently reveal your secret life.
How to hide files on your PC
If you don’t want to use the ultra-secure login setup (or can’t if you are just one of the many accounts on a shared PC), you should think of a pretty good plan for hiding your files on your PC for at least a minute.
Before I get started, I would like to point out that this method is not reliable. You will need to cover your tracks well, and all it takes is one check of your storage for someone to say, “Hmm, I’m wondering why this random folder is taking up a terabyte of space.” (This is assuming you have a lot to hide; tucking away a reasonable amount of files on your computer will be much easier.)
The first and easiest way to hide files on your computer is to simply zip them using a free tool like 7-Zip . You will provide the encryption password as part of the archive creation process (and also choose the option to encrypt your file names). Then you can either leave that .ZIP file as it is, or rename it to something completely unassuming: Steam.bak , say if you’re a gamer. If anyone asks, this is a backup of some of your games.
If you are too lazy to unpack files every time you want to view them, you have another option. Find an incomprehensible folder on your hard drive and make it even more incomprehensible. Perhaps add some official sounding subfolders to a random Windows folder like C:\Windows\IdentityCRL\production\user\tmp , or bury the folder in the Program Files folders. You can even give them strange names.
Ultimately, you can create a folder structure that looks like this:
C:\Windows\IdentityCRL\production\system\login\shell\backup\~\.\.\
This is a bit extreme, but this is just an example. Drop any files you want to hide on your system into this last folder and either remember that you hid them all in the Windows “IdentityCRL” folder, or just send yourself an email address so you don’t lose it.
Then right-click one of the root folders in Explorer and select Properties . Select the checkbox to mark the folder and the files it contains as “hidden,” which means they can only be found in Explorer if someone turns on the Hidden Items box in the View menu of Explorer. Likewise, click Advanced and uncheck Allow files in this folder to index content in addition to file properties.
Finally, you need to open your Windows 10 search settings (via Settings> Search> Windows Search in the sidebar) and make sure your system is using classic search and not advanced. Then click on “Configure Search Locations Here”. link to make sure your hidden folder isn’t being sucked into Windows indexing so that your files can’t show up if someone types in any part of their name or extension using the search function in the start menu. You can also add the parent folder (for example, “c: \ Windows \”) to the exclusion list if you don’t think it will pique your curiosity.
That’s a lot of work, isn’t it? You can also use an application such as VeraCrypt to create encrypted “containers” on your hard drive that cannot be accessed (or perhaps even found). This is a much simpler solution than dealing with the nuances of hiding files in the “open” Windows folder, but it requires you to jump through a few extra hoops and may seem less convenient than just clicking on “hidden files.” »In the explorer to open the cache. That’s your decision.
Don’t forget about “recent items”
Assuming you’ve hidden all your files, there is one more closing track step you can’t forget: your recent lists. Windows 10, as well as many of the apps you use to view your content, will highlight files you’ve recently opened in a variety of potentially harmful ways.
For example, you might want to turn off the “Show recently opened items …” option in Settings> Personalization> Start , and anything else that might tell you – perhaps your “most used” applications. This ensures that the files you are viewing do not end up in any “jump lists” that pop up when you right-click the icons in the taskbar. Likewise, launch File Explorer, go to the View tab and click Options . Uncheck “Show recently used files in quick access” and “Show frequently used folders in quick access.” And while you’re there, clear your guide’s history.
Made? Not really! These are just a few of the steps you need to take to ensure that your … actions … don’t appear explicitly in Windows 10. Whatever applications you use to view any content, they may also have their own “Recent Items “. a story that can tell you whether there was someone who opened the specified application and viewed this list.
You will need to be root through your apps settings to see if there is a way to disable such lists. It should be. For example, this is where you find it in VLC:
I know this is a very big job and it only takes one mistake to get exposed. Apart from the recommendation to view your porn only in a sandbox or in a virtual machine – which you could do too! – hiding things in a system that is used by several people is always like playing cat and mouse. If you’re lucky, all of your roommates / family / loved ones will be Luddites, not suspicious network administrators.