Encryption is one of those things that people consider as overkill until they have a problem that could have been prevented easily.

Let's take a practical example. A few months ago, Marie's mother had a hardware problem on her computer. I was there so I had a quick look and reckoned the motherboard was playing funny games. The computer had been bought from a computer shop and was stil.l under its first year warranty. We took the PV to the shop, explained the problem to the gadgie there and left after being told to come back in a few days. We went back (our) home and marie logged on to MSN .... her mother's account was on-line. In other words, the gadgie had connected the PC to the internet, the password was blank, and auto-connect settings on Messenger logged her account on when HE logged on. Of course there are several problems here. blank password and auto-login are the obvious ones, along with the gadgie's idea of connecting the PC to their internal LAN. But because we gave physical access to the hardware, a login password would not have been a bigger hurdle to bypass for Joe Gadgie. What are the solutions, we had to give him the PC for maintenance, we couldn't take out the hard-drive out really bacause he was not sure where the problem was, even though I told him. And still we don't trust this guy with our data.