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In one of my earlier videos, I showed you how to bypass and reset the password on any Mac.
This can be extremely useful if you ever forget your password, but that same method can also be used by thieves to access your computer.
In today's How To I'm going to show you two ways to prevent this.
The first method using your max built in disc encryption tool.
Head to system preferences, click on Security and Privacy, and then click the File Vault tab.
To enable File Vault click the lock icon in the lower left corner and enter you admin name and password.
Then just click the turn on FileVault button.
If you ever need to reset the password on your computer you will be able to do so using your iCloud account or with a special recovery key.
However you will have to store the key in a safe place because if you forget your password and lose the key all of the data on your disk will be lost.
FileVault will begin to encrypt the files on your drive after you restart your computer.
This method will keep you file safe, but someone can still erase everything on your computer by going into recovery mode.
To prevent this, we're going to set a firmware password.
You're going to restart your computer and when the gray screen appears hold the command and R keys at the same time until you see the apple logo.
Click the Utilities option in the top menu bar, select Firmware Password Utility, and click Turn On Firmware Password.
Now you're going to want to enter a password that you won't forget, because if you do you'll have to take a trip to your nearest Apple store to reset it.
Once you have entered a password, click the Set Password button and restart the computer.
The next time you or anyone else attempts to boot into recovery mode you will be required to enter this password.
For more how-tos like this one be sure to check out howto.cnet.com.
You can also reach out to me on Twitter with any questions or comments.
I'm Dan Graziano for CNET.
Thanks for watching.
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