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Possible Duplicate:
Is there a way to password protect individual apps?

I want to know if I can make Mail require a password to actually do anything, see messages, etc. so no one can just go into my Mail and send messages or see my received messages.

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I'm okay with leaving this open since you put emphasis on requiring a password only for certain things, but if you think the other one is similar enough then go ahead. Thanks :-) – Nathan Greenstein♦ Aug 19 '11 at 2:32
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It really is exactly a duplicate. Not liking the answers already provided isn't a good reason to keep two versions of the same question around. Let's vote up or bounty up the question that already has the discussion about why this isn't feasible to do. – bmike♦ Aug 19 '11 at 3:53
I think it is not an exact duplicate because we are specifically talking about Mail here, and there are maybe more Mail-specific solutions to the problem at hand (such as "use webmail"). – Thilo Aug 22 '11 at 2:46

marked as duplicate by Mahnax, patrix♦, CajunLuke, Mark, daviesgeek Oct 24 '12 at 20:05

This question has been asked before and already has an answer. If those answers do not fully address your question, please ask a new question.

3 Answers

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To keep email secure in an unsecured account, webmail may be a good option to use instead of Mail.app, which isn't designed to be secured separately from the account it's being used in.

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up vote 1 down vote

I didn't try it myself, but you could set "Keep copies of messages for offline viewing" to "Don't keep copies of any messages" (see screenshot) so you don't have copies of your messages sticking around. Also, you should remove your account password from your keychain, so Mail.app asks for it each time you open it. If you are going to try this, let us know whether it works as desired :)

Mail.app Prefs Screenshot

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up vote -1 down vote

I know it's not exactly what your looking for, but you can 'disguise' mail by changing it's name and icon to that of another application.

For example pick a random application abc.app that generally would stimulate ones suspicion, and copy it's icon and name to mail.

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I'd advise against renaming programs that come bundled with the OS. – zneak Aug 19 '11 at 4:33
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If nothing else, this will cause problems with any of the point updates that Apple issues for the OS. The updater will not know to update abc.app instead of Mail.app. – glorifiedHacker Aug 19 '11 at 5:06

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