I find this very useful. Despite all the user permissions you set, it's easy for someone/admin to do sudo and read your personal files..Many work environments provide users the permission to sudo or become super user. Vim lets you encrypt file within the edit session. :X Will prompt for encryption key. Enter the encryption key and REMEMBER to save it using :w. That will encrypt the file. If you don't want to leave behind traces of your edits, note the following. set viminfo='0,\"0,\/0,:0,f0