When you have children around the house, I can’t stress enough the importance of protecting that important data living inside your Mac. Just imagine returning to your Mac to find that your hard drive has been renamed or moved to the trash.
While it is a good idea to have your user name set to logout after a period of inactivity there are other things you can do to simplify the act of protecting your data.
If you are like me, having children loose in the house can keep you from completing anything you sit down at the computer to do in just one sitting. You spend five minutes here, ten minutes there, etc. Your computer would logout while you were away and you have to login the user name again each time you returned to the computer.
What I don’t enjoy is having to wait for my user to login each time I sit down. I have a lot of applications that automatically start up at login. This leaves me waiting too long before I am able to click around (time is precious around here).
Here is a helpful tip that will allow your computer to require a password to wake from a screen saver. This will keep your user name active for longer periods of time while hiding behind the screen saver and at the same time keep your Mac safe from little fingers.
Pay a visit to your System Preference, located in the dock or in your apple menu. Click on the Security Icon and change the following settings. Click the box next to the items (Require password to wake from sleep or screen saver, disable automatic login and log out after _ minutes of inactivity). You will need to set the number of minutes you want your computer to completely logout the current user.
The next thing you will need to do is return back to your System Preference (by selecting “Show All” and select the Desktop & Screen Savor icon.) Click on the Screen Savor tab in the top of the window. Down at the bottom of this window you can set your Screen Savor activation time.
Posted by Robin 