Tech2know

If you are using a computer(well of course, everyone use computer now a days) the you might want to protect some sensitive files so  that no one except you can  access those files. There could be a number of persons that have access to your computer like friends, relatives etc when they come to your place. One way is to hide the files using Windows feature(Just right click a file or a folder->Properties->Check ‘Hidden’). For this to work, the option ‘Do not show hidden file and folder’ should be selected via ‘My computer’->’Tools’->’Folder options’->’View’. But this is very common  method and everyone already know this. One other method is to hide a file in deep hierarchy of folder making it difficult to search. But still the file can be opened if someone find it by chance.

So, why not to for a method which allows opening a file only on providing a password. Here Androsa File Protector fits for the job. The setup file of Androsa File Protector is only 2MB in size and supports Windows 2000 (Service pack 4 required), Windows XP (Service pack 2 suggested), Windows Server 2003 and all versions of Windows Vista. below is a screen shot of Androsa File Protector.

Installation is very easy and just a matter of few clicks on well known button ‘Next’ . Now, coming  on how you can set a password for a file. well, this is also very easy. Below are the steps :

1) Open Androsa File Protector.

2) Add a file via menu option ‘File’->’Add files’.

3) select a file for which you want to set password. Once it appears in Androsa File Protector, state(Not protected) of the file will indicates that you have not set a password for the file.

4) Select the file and click on ‘Protect / Restore / Create SDX’ button on tool bar and then ‘Protect / Restore’ option. A new window will appear where you can select a algorithm from drop down and specify the password. The same is shown below.

5) Now just click on ‘Protect’ and the file will be protected with the password. Androsa File Protector will create a new file with the same name but extension will be changed to .afp as below.

If you see both the old unprotected file(Bot found screen.jpg  in current example) and the new protected one Bot found screen.afp then just refresh the screen once. The old one will vanish.

To open the file, just double click and supply the password. The file will be extracted to its original form. Again, just refresh the screen if you see both protected and original file.

So, we come to the end of protecting files with password. You might be interested in my earlier post on data encryption Secure your data with free encryption software TrueCrypt and managing your passwords How to Manage your passwords with free KeePass.

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