Windows 7 - A question with regards to Encryption?

I understand that Encryption protects a person from data theft in a variety of ways.

My question is are there any benefits with regards to virus and malware? I understand that most malware/virus are installed by user error or social engineering. Does encryption protect against being infected? My guess is probably not but how about after infection? Will encryption protect you against data theft? In what ways can encryption protect a person pre/post infection?

I'm using TrueCrypt.

Encryption will not protect you in any way whatsoever against viruses and other forms of malware. As far as data theft goes, it merely adds another layer of protection to your data that they have to remove in order to access it.

Okay thanks

Against data theft? I guess the answer is depends. Depends on what they are trying to do. If they throw a keylogger on your system and it grabs your passwords, then no. If they take control of your system to steal your files, then yeah encryption should protect you if those files were encrypted. Then again, if they are on your system, then they could gain access to your private key. Depends on how bad they want what you have.

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Unfortunately I don't think encryption will provide any protection either before or after malware infection. In fact you might want to find out if there's malware that will corrupt Truecrypt since that could cause big problems.

You didn't mention whether you use full disk encryption or just have an encrypted "container" in the OS. Full disk encryption prevents people from even booting the computer without the master password, but once the system is running it's not protected. An encrypted container prevents access to data while the system is running, so there are advantages to both approaches.