Entourage Password Protection

[Julian]

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Processor: Intel
Email Client: pop

Apologies if I'm repeating a question here but I've scrolled through the other posts on this subject & I can't find a clear-cut answer...so here it is:

How can I password protect the opening of my Entourage account?
This is a standard & valuable tool within Outlook so I would expect Entourage to be at least as good.....yes?

I'm not a computer geek so a simple explanation will be much appreciated please....anyone?

Much obliged,
Julian

 

[William Smith [MVP]]

How can I password protect the opening of my Entourage account? This
is a standard & valuable tool within Outlook so I would expect
Entourage to be at least as good.....yes?

Entourage is not responsible for protecting your mail from prying eyes
once it has been downloaded. You need to go to Apple menu --> System
Preferences... --> Accounts and set a password on your entire Mac OS X
account. This makes the Mac OS X system protect not only your mail but
also your documents that reside outside of mail.

If you have multiple users on your computer then create an account for
each of them in the Accounts area and assign each of them a password.
This has the added advantage that each person stores his documents and
preferences separately and securely from everyone else.

Hope this helps!

--

bill

Entourage Help Page <http://entourage.mvps.org/>
Entourage Help Blog <http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/>
YouTalk <http://nine.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/youtalk>
Twitter: follow <http://twitter.com/meck>

 

[Julian]

Entourage is not responsible for protecting your mail from prying eyes
once it has been downloaded. You need to go to Apple menu --> System
Preferences... --> Accounts and set a password on your entire Mac OS X
account. This makes the Mac OS X system protect not only your mail but
also your documents that reside outside of mail.

If you have multiple users on your computer then create an account for
each of them in the Accounts area and assign each of them a password.
This has the added advantage that each person stores his documents and
preferences separately and securely from everyone else.

Hope this helps!

Thanks for the clarification Bill but I don't think "responsibility" comes into the matter. So the short answer is no.

It's disappointing that such an obvious simple step is not in place already (as with Outlook) or more importantly, can/will not be introduced. The benefits are obvious as there's been many posts & blogs about this same complaint.

Do you know if this this feature is being considered as an update?

Rgds Julian

 

[Adam Bailey]

Thanks for the clarification Bill but I don't think "responsibility" comes
into the matter. So the short answer is no.

It's disappointing that such an obvious simple step is not in place already
(as with Outlook) or more importantly, can/will not be introduced. The
benefits are obvious as there's been many posts & blogs about this same
complaint.

Only if you're used to Outlook's behavior. It's ridiculous to try to
have security settings on each individual program when Mac OS X is
already designed from the ground up to be a secure multi-user operating
system.

Do you know if this this feature is being considered as an update?

We hope not. Rather than trying to make Entourage work like Outlook,
please use a Mac like a Mac. Use the multiple users feature and log out
when you're not at your computer. With Fast User Switching, there's
simply no reason not to. Once you get used to it, you will find it is
much more secure and user-friendly than simply trying to lock one
application.

 

[Julian]

Only if you're used to Outlook's behavior. It's ridiculous to try to
have security settings on each individual program when Mac OS X is
already designed from the ground up to be a secure multi-user operating
system.


We hope not. Rather than trying to make Entourage work like Outlook,
please use a Mac like a Mac. Use the multiple users feature and log out
when you're not at your computer. With Fast User Switching, there's
simply no reason not to. Once you get used to it, you will find it is
much more secure and user-friendly than simply trying to lock one
application.

I appreciate your comments Adam but once again the Mac vs PC attitude seems to be impacting the feedback. Entourage was developed by MS as an Outlook clone for Mac. So what's wrong with copying some of the better features from one system to another...isn't that normal practice?

Unfortunately, this argument is getting nowhere but I like to register my 2c worth as an impartial user who like many others out there, have to make use of both systems between work & play.

Rgds Julian

 

[Adam Bailey]

Entourage was developed by MS as an Outlook clone for Mac.

No, it most certainly was not.

http://www.entourage.mvps.org/articles/entourage.html

 

[jamesmackenzie]

How can I password protect the opening of my Entourage account?

This is a standard & valuable tool within Outlook so I would expect Entourage to be at least as good.....yes?

Entourage did work this way for me on my Mac until we started a new
school year and apparently some software update has removed it...?

I was able to place a password on each of the Entourage identities on
my machine. This made email private but allowed multi-users to access
the same Word, Excel, InDesign, etc. files, which is necessary for our
work.

I agree that this was very helpful and should be re-instated.
Otherwise, how do you file share so many documents between different
users? We are talking many files here, not just one or two.

Thanks.

 

[Barry Wainwright]

Entourage did work this way for me on my Mac until we started a new
school year and apparently some software update has removed it...?

I was able to place a password on each of the Entourage identities on
my machine. This made email private but allowed multi-users to access
the same Word, Excel, InDesign, etc. files, which is necessary for our
work.

I agree that this was very helpful and should be re-instated.
Otherwise, how do you file share so many documents between different
users? We are talking many files here, not just one or two.

Thanks.

Microsoft has frequently been heavily criticised for implementing
bespoke solutions when an 'industry standard' solution exists. This is
what they did when they tried to implement a secure password prevention
scheme on Entourage accounts. It didn't work very well (good security is
very, very hard to do well!) and was easily broken.

Instead, when Entourage 2004 was introduced (I believe this is when the
change took place, but it may have been later) they removed the rather
poor protection offered by a password and instead relied on the much
more secure user security offered by the system logins. Different users
on any machine _should- be using a different login for each user. This
is what the Unix underpinnings of OS X does very, very well!

I understand the need to share other documents, but this is also
something that the system does very well as well.

There is a 'Shared' folder in the 'Users' folder of every system. Any
documents stored here will be accessible to everyone who uses the
computer. Alternatively, other folders could be shared amongst various
users (or groups of users) by assigning appropriate permissions.

Can I encourage you to explore these options - i think when you get used
to the slightly different way of working you will be very satisfied with
the results, and they are certainly very much more secure than the
password protection system that used to exist.