My first post so Hello to all in the forum
I've just started using Ubuntu 8.10 and have installed KMyMoney.

Could anyone explain, how I password protect my KMyMoney acccounts

Thanks in advance for any advice offered

Hello and Welcome,

Firstly there is a sub-forum for KMyMoney, look for it above the posts for Office & Personal Information Management. I don't know if one of the forum moderators can move your post there for you?

The password feature in KMyMoney went a long time ago, the developers recommend using GPG encryption, I haven't implemented this yet but it is a very secure way of storing data.

There is a brief explanation in Chapter 19 of the KMyMoney Handbook:

http://kmymoney2.sourceforge.net/kmymoney-user.pdf

You need GPG installed on your system, more on this here:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/GnuPrivacyGuardHowto

Sorry I can't be of more help but I haven't yet tried it myself!

Thread moved to appropriate subforum.

NickElliott wrote:The password feature in KMyMoney went a long time ago, the developers recommend using GPG encryption, I haven't implemented this yet but it is a very secure way of storing data.

In fact, it was never there. We just considered any form of password protection we could come up with as insecure. We are not the security/encryption experts, so we better rely on methods and procedures that are proven to work and be safe.

Please follow any guidance on the web (e.g. http://aplawrence.com/Basics/gpg.html) to create your personal key-pair for GPG. Once created, you can use it to store your data encrypted. As mentioned, the KMyMoney manual (http://kmymoney2.sourceforge.net/online ... ypted.html ) contains some information. If you need more, please feel free to ask here. Make sure to not lose your keys. Once lost, there's no way out (maybe except the recovery key feature). We have had users, who started from scratch because they wiped their private key.

ipwizard wrote:In fact, it was never there. We just considered any form of password protection we could come up with as insecure. We are not the security/encryption experts, so we better rely on methods and procedures that are proven to work and be safe.

Strange, I still have my original KMyMoney password in my Password Manger and assumed that the password feature was removed at some point...but this is not important and not the reason for my post:

I created an encryption key for my data file and imported the KMyMoney recovery key.

I enabled GPG encryption in KMyMoney Configuration but this only applies to new files and KMyMoney told me to 'Save As...' my exisiting data file and apply my encryption key.

Now when I open my file it asks for my passphrase. So far so good.

However when I 'Save As...' I should also select 'Manage additional keys' and add 'kmymoney-recover@users.sourceforge.net' so that it applies this key as well? I assume that without doing this you won't be able to help recover my data should I lose my private key?

NickElliott wrote:Now when I open my file it asks for my passphrase. So far so good.

However when I 'Save As...' I should also select 'Manage additional keys' and add 'kmymoney-recover@users.sourceforge.net' so that it applies this key as well? I assume that without doing this you won't be able to help recover my data should I lose my private key?

Yes, that's right. The inclusion of the recover key is a global option that can be controlled via the encryption page in the settings dialog. It should be effective the next time you save the encrypted file (no need to do another 'save as' if you just add the key).

You can use the following trick to see for which keys the file is encrypted:

Code: Select all


thb@dollo:~> gpg -d thb.kmy  > /dev/null

You need a passphrase to unlock the secret key for
user: "Thomas Baumgart "
1024-bit ELG key, ID D1F83C2B, created 2001-06-23 (main key ID B75DD3BA)

gpg: encrypted with 2048-bit ELG key, ID 8C0FE2F3, created 2005-01-03
      "KMyMoney emergency data recovery "
gpg: encrypted with 1024-bit ELG key, ID D1F83C2B, created 2001-06-23
      "Thomas Baumgart "



ipwizard wrote:You can use the following trick to see for which keys the file is encrypted:

Code: Select all


thb@dollo:~> gpg -d thb.kmy  > /dev/null



Thanks for this trick, I'm happy that everything is working as it should be.

Many thanks to all who replied sorry for being late getting back but I've had a few problems with my original distro Ubuntu.
I've moved to Mandriva now and found this much better for me.

Regards all Martman