In response to my post about the email that shouldn’t have been sent, I was asked to explain how a user can lock his or her workstation without losing whatever it is that they happen to be working on at the time. By doing this, you can confidently walk away from the computer without having to log out and yet not be concerned about people seeing things or having access to information that they shouldn’t.

There are a variety of ways that this can be accomplished in any given operating system and I’m sure there are ways that I do not know. Also, if anyone has experience with doing this procedure on a mac, leave a comment because that is one system that I have not had very much experience with and it would be nice to have that available to readers of this post as well.

In Linux, to lock the screen from a Gnome environment, the two easiest ways are to either use the keyboard shortcut (Ctrl+Alt+L) or to select it from the Desktop menu in the task bar (Desktop – Lock Screen). Of course, there are probably other ways and you could also create a shortcut for this task and put the shortcut wherever you want. You could also change the keyboard shortcut to a key combination of your choosing. In KDE, the keyboard shortcut is the same but the menu option is labeled Lock Session and is under the main K menu on the screen.

To do this in Windows, there are also several options. Your choices may also change depending on which version of the Windows operating system you are using. In Windows XP, the easiest way to do this is to press the windows key (it’s usually between ctrl and alt) and while holding that key down, press L. Another way to do this is to go to the start menu and choose log out and then click on Switch User. There is a third way in XP which is to press ctrl+alt+delete and then click on the shut down menu and choose switch user from there.

In some versions of Windows, pressing ctrl+alt+delete will provide you with a selection of buttons to choose from and one of those buttons is labeled “Lock Workstation” and clicking that button will then have the same effect. You can also create shortcuts in Windows that you would be able to click on and have the screen lock.

You now have a selection of ways with which to lock your workstation, use them. This will help prevent people from seeing things they shouldn’t when you step away from the computer and also ensure that someone does not use your email account to send a message that you would not approve of.