[plug] protecting a tar file

[Denis Brown]

Thanks, Matt and Bernard.

I like Matt's analogy of a tar file to a hard disk - if the "device" can
be accessed then so too can its contents, thus permissions are not the way
to do it.

Thanks, Bernard, for your obfuscation suggestion - an excellent example of
piping to throw people off the scent :-)   The chmod'ing to 000 was close
to what I had in mind but as you both point out, it is comparatively
straight forward to suss out why extracted contents cannot be read, and do
something about it thanks to control over the "device."

On balance I think I will go with GPG and a strong pass phrase... if I
ever fell under a bus, etc, I would not want the "secret" of how the tar
files were protected to die with me.   I will most likely make use of the
rot idea for protecting other of my personal data so your suggestion is
not in vain!

I hope the ideas raised have been useful to others, too.

Cheers,
Denis