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Okay, so now that we understand why tails is non-persistent by default, why you might want to use

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persistence and the warnings and the things that you want to keep in mind while using persistence.

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Let's go ahead and see how to enable it and how to use it.

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So I have tails right here.

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And to enable persistent storage, we're going to go to applications tails, and we're going to click

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on Persistence Storage.

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This will open the Persistence Wizard.

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It's also asking me for a passphrase.

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This is the passphrase that will be used to encrypt the storage.

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Make sure you pick something that is difficult to guess and difficult to brute force, but make sure

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it's also easy for you to remember.

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So I'm going to put my passphrase.

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I'm going to verify it in the second box.

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And once you're ready, you can click on Create to create the persistent storage.

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And once done, you will get a menu like this one right here which will ask you to what exactly you

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want to save in this persistent volume.

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So by default, you can see personal data is set to on.

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And what this will do, it will actually create a directory that you'll be able to see here in places

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called persistent.

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And anything you store in this directory will be persistent and will not be removed when you restart

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or shut down tails.

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Now, you can take any of these as you wish.

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For example, if you want to store your bookmarks, you want to take this.

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If you want to store the settings you set for your network connections, you want to take this.

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So, for example, if you connect to a Wi-Fi network, it will remember the password because otherwise

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with the installation that we have right now, the Wi-Fi settings are not stored.

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So you'll have to connect to the same network.

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If you are connecting to the same network every time you boot into tales.

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The additional software will not remove any software you install on tells.

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Now, you want to be careful about this because like I said, if hackers install software on your installation,

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then that software will also be persistent.

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So make sure you only turn this on if you know what you're doing.

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You have other options.

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For example, for printers, for Thunderbird, which is a mail Client GnuPG.

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The electron Bitcoin wallet.

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And basically turning on persistence for any of these programs will store anything you do within these

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programs and store all the settings.

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So I'm actually going to turn it on for Electron because I might want to store some keys in this Bitcoin

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wallet and I wouldn't want them to be deleted.

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I'm going to do the same with GnuPG because again, I might have some passwords in here or keys that

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I don't want them to be deleted when I restart or boot into tails.

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Again, I'll do this for Thunderbird as well and for pigeon just in case I actually go ahead and modify

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the settings of any of these programs or store something in these programs.

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I don't want it to be deleted.

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I want it to be stored every time I boot into tails.

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So like I said, go through these options, see which programs you might want to use and turn them on

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accordingly.

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Now, don't worry about these programs that I didn't really speak about.

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We will go through a lot of these programs as we go through the course and you'll learn exactly what

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they can be used for.

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Now I'm going to close this and I'm going to restart.

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And now when you get to the welcome Wizard of Tails, you'll see we have an extra option in here.

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So right now we can put the passphrase here and unlock the persistent storage or just click on start

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tails to start it normally without unlocking the storage.

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So it'll work exactly like we've seen in previous lectures with no persistence at all.

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So right now I actually want to unlock the persistent storage, so I'm going to put the passphrase that

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I created when I created the storage and I'm going to click on Unlock.

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As you can see, it's telling us that the storage is unlocked.

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And now if I start Tales, I should have access to this persistent storage and be able to store files

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in my persistent directory and all the settings that I'm going to change within the programs that I

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picked will still be stored even if I restart Tales.

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So if I go to places now, you will see we have an extra directory called Persistent.

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And anything we place in this directory will not be removed when we restart.

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Tails So let's try this.

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I'm going to right click and create a new folder and let's call this persistence test.

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So we have this new folder here and I'm going to create a new folder on the desktop and we'll call this

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test two.

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So when I restart tells now, test two should be removed because it's stored outside of the persistent

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storage and persistent test in here.

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Should still be here.

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I'm just going to do this to help you understand how to use this persistent storage so you can put any

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files that you don't want them to be removed in here, and then anything you store outside of this directory

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will be securely wiped every time you turn off tails.

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I'm also going to go ahead and connect to a Wi-Fi network because remember, when I configured persistence,

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I chose to store the network settings so any settings I make should be persistent and should not be

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reset when I restart tails.

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So I'm going to go to my Wi-Fi settings and I'm going to click on Select Network.

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I'm going to select my network and connect, put the password connect.

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And as you can see, the icon is restored.

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It's telling me tour is ready.

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And if I look in here, wired, disconnected, and Wi-Fi is connected to my network, too.

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So now when I restart the test in here, the test directory should be removed because it's outside of

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the persistent storage.

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The persistent test here should still be here because it's inside the persistent storage, and I should

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automatically connect to this network because I configured my network settings to be persistent.

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So this will go to show you that all of the programs that I turned on, the persistent option to will

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store any settings or anything that I do in them.

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So let's go ahead and restart.

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Okay, so we're back at the login screen again.

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As usual, I'm going to put my password in here to unlock the persistent volume unlock that's unlocked.

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Perfect.

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Now we're going to start it.

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And perfect, as you can see.

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First of all, we don't see the test directory that we created here.

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This is good because we created it outside of our persistent volume.

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Now let's go to places and go to our persistent volume.

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And as you can see, we do have the persistent directory right here.

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This is perfect.

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This should still be here because we created this inside the persistent volume.

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So if you stored any other files in here, you'll always be able to see them when you start tales.

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Let's go ahead and check if we automatically connect it to our Wi-Fi network.

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And perfect, as you can see it, automatically connected.

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Like I said, without persistent, you would have had to connect to your target network every time you

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start tales because the network settings won't be stored.

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This is just an example of all the other applications which we enabled persistent for.

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So right now I can use any of the other applications that I enabled persistence for, and anything I

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do on these applications will be stored even after I restart Tales.

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So this is perfect.

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Right now I have the best of both worlds.

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I can store files in a specific encrypted volume.

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I can also store some settings that I specifically chose and everything else will be securely wiped

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every time I turn off the machine.

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Not only that, but I still have the option of using tales with no persistence exactly as we seen in

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previous lectures.

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Let me restart and all I have to do is basically just start tales without unlocking the persistent volume.

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So right here, all I have to do is literally ignore this and just click on Start Tales and this will

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start it for me in the normal mode without mounting the persistent volume.

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So I won't even have access to the file stored in the persistent directory.

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So now even if I go to places, I don't even have a directory called Persistent.

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And just to confirm, if I go to my network settings, you'll see that it's detecting that I have a

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Wi-Fi adapter, but it's not automatically connecting to my network, even though that we can detect

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the network because the network settings are not accessible, because we started Tales without mounting

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the persistent volume.

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So right now we have an installation of tails on a USB stick that we can use as an amnesic live operating

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system where nothing gets stored once you shut it down.

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And if we wanted to, we can unlock the persistent volume which will allow us to store files in a specific

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location, and it will also allow us to restore the settings for the programs that we enabled persistence

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for.

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And keep in mind, all of these settings and all of these files are stored in an encrypted volume that

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is encrypted with a passphrase that we pick ourselves.

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Now, if for any reason you wanted to delete the persistence storage, all you have to do is go to applications

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again, two tales Persistence, storage and click on Delete.

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This will ask you if you really want to do this.

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I'm going to say yes.

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Delete it for me please.

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And that's it.

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Now it's deleted.

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So now if you restart you won't even get the option to unlock the persistence volume because it is deleted.