[ Music ] ^M00:00:09 >> Tom Merritt: Laptops are all the rage these days but they're easily stolen. Hey come back here with that, even from places you think are safe like stop that. Even if you just lose a laptop you probably don't want anyone to have easy access to all your data just by pressing the power button. That's why the first step, definitely not the last, but the first step to protecting your laptop is to put strong password protection on your user accounts. Most people think this is a pain and they're kind of right but it's easy to set up and a small price to pay in inconvenience to keep your data safe. Let's start with Windows. Go to control panel and choose user accounts. Choose the advanced tab, check the box that says requires users to press control alt delete and press ok, if that's not how your Window's machine looks try this from the user account screen. Click change the way users log on or off, uncheck the welcome screen option and this will force a user to enter a username and password when they log in. Now, go back to the control panel and open display options, click the screen saver tab and check the option that makes the screen saver ask for a password then press ok. Finally, go back to the control panel and this time chose power options. Select the advanced tab and make sure you check the box by prompt for password when computer resumes from standby and press ok. If you're on a Mac go to system preferences and chose security. Check disable automatic log in and check require password to wake this computer from sleep or screen saver. Now if you want to be really secure you need to take other action like logging out of accounts, encrypting data and so on. [ Background music ] >> But with the password protection you're on the right track to a safer laptop setup, just in case. I'm Tom Merritt CNET.com
