Translations by Artur Szymanski

You will be prompted for your password.

Click <guilabel>Security</guilabel>.

Tick <guilabel>Enable Automatic Login</guilabel>.

Choose a <guilabel>Username</guilabel> from the drop down list to login as.

Click <guibutton>Close</guibutton>.

Automatic login is highly discouraged because it provides less security for your system. Also take care when in the Login Settings application as there are options which may prevent Ubuntu from logging in or starting properly.

Keeping Your Computer Safe

Credits and License

This document is made available under the Creative Commons ShareAlike 2.5 License (CC-BY-SA).

You are free to modify, extend, and improve the Ubuntu documentation source code under the terms of this license. All derivative works must be released under this license.

This documentation is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AS DESCRIBED IN THE DISCLAIMER.

Keep your password safe. If you want to change it, you can by opening <application>About Me</application> (<menuchoice><guimenu>System</guimenu><guimenuitem>Preferences</guimenuitem><guimenuitem>About Me</guimenuitem></menuchoice>) and clicking <guibutton>Change Password</guibutton>.

Open <menuchoice><guimenu>System</guimenu><guimenuitem>Administration</guimenuitem><guimenuitem>Login Screen</guimenuitem></menuchoice>.

Press <guibutton>Unlock</guibutton> and type your password to unlock the settings

Press <guibutton>Close</guibutton>.

Changes will be applied on re-boot.

Give a separate user account to each person

If a pair of blue arrows appears in the panel when the updates have finished, you need to restart the computer to complete the installation.

To check for updates yourself, choose <menuchoice><guimenu>System</guimenu><guimenuitem>Administration</guimenuitem><guimenuitem>Update Manager</guimenuitem></menuchoice> and press <guibutton>Check</guibutton>.

To change how often Ubuntu checks for updates, or to set updates to install or download automatically, choose <menuchoice><guimenu>System</guimenu><guimenuitem>Administration</guimenuitem><guimenuitem>Software Sources</guimenuitem></menuchoice>, and then <guilabel>Updates</guilabel>.

Click the <application>User Switcher</application> in the top right of the panel and then press <guibutton>Lock screen</guibutton>.

Press <keycombo><keycap>Control</keycap><keycap>Alt</keycap><keycap>L</keycap></keycombo> to lock the screen. This keyboard shortcut can be changed in <menuchoice><guimenu>System</guimenu><guimenuitem>Preferences</guimenuitem><guimenuitem>Keyboard Shortcuts</guimenuitem></menuchoice>.

You can add a <guibutton>Lock Screen</guibutton> button to a panel for easy access. Right-click a panel (for example, the panel at the top of the screen), select <guibutton>Add to Panel...</guibutton> and drag the <guibutton>Lock Screen</guibutton> item to the desired location.

To unlock the screen, move the mouse or press a key. Then, type your password and either press the <keycap>Enter</keycap> key or press the <guibutton>Unlock</guibutton> button.

If more than one person has a user account on your computer and the screen is locked, other users can press the <guibutton>Switch user...</guibutton> button to use the computer, even while the screen is locked. They will be unable to access your currently-open work, and you will be able to switch back to your locked session when they have finished using the computer.

You may wish to install a firewall to protect your computer against unauthorized access by people on the Internet or your network. Firewalls block connections to your computer from unknown sources, which helps to prevent security breaches. If you use a router to connect to the Internet, the router may already have a firewall configured which regulates connections from the Internet to your network. This section deals with setting up a firewall on Ubuntu to regulate connections to your computer.

Firewall configuration tools

Gufw

To install and enable <application>Gufw</application>:

gufw

Install the <placeholder-1/> package.

The default configuration is to deny connections. This means that a program attempting to connect to your computer will be denied. Certain programs or services which use the internet may require you to add an exception.

To add an exception:

Click <guibutton>Add</guibutton>.

Testing the firewall and monitoring network traffic

To test the firewall it is best to scan it from a second computer. A popular application to use is called <application>nmap</application>.

nmap

Run:

nmap -vAPN 192.168.1.100

Substitute the IP address of the computer you want to scan for <emphasis>192.168.1.100</emphasis>.

To see what services are associated with the open ports, run:

lsof -i -n -P

You can also make use of an online firewall testing service such as <ulink url="http://www.grc.com/">ShieldsUP</ulink>.

Never click on links in emails which lead to websites asking for your password or similar. It is possible for the text of the link to give one address, when really it opens up another (possibly dangerous) address. Instead, type the link into your web browser yourself and proceed from there.

A problem which you may occasionally encounter is the unexpected loss of some of your work and settings for one reason or another. The causes of such <emphasis>data loss</emphasis> are many and varied; it could be anything from a power cut to accidentally deleting a file. It is highly recommended that you make regular back-up copies of your important files so that, if you do encounter a problem, you will not have lost those files.

A simple way of backing-up your files is to manually copy them to a safe location (see above) by using the <application>File Browser</application>.

Alternatively, you can use a dedicated back-up application, such as <application>Simple Backup Suite</application>.

<ulink url="apt:sbackup">Install the <application>sbackup</application> package</ulink> from the <quote>Universe</quote> repository.

Press <guibutton>Save</guibutton> to save your settings.

Your backup will be placed as directory into <filename>/var/backup</filename>. You must be an <ulink type="help" url="ghelp:administrative">administrator</ulink> to access your backup.