for my desktop i use a great program called DriveCrypt, soi wondered if there's somethign similar our for my pda. what i want is for all information to be encrypted, untill such time as when i put in my password(s), after which i would be permitted to browse through and work with my info as if it was not encrypted at all
KPDUTY, correct me if i'm wrong, but resco file explorer has to decrypt the whole folder before letting me browse through it, and that ain't what i need. or am i wrong?
Dumb question. In simple terms what does encryption do and how does one use it?
It safekeeps your private information from prying eyes. Think of it as a safe where you keep your important papers (passport, marriage certificate, etc). While someone can see that you have a safe, they don't know what's inside nor can they access the contents without a key. You can make key copies and give them to your close relatives. Same with encryption software. It encodes files (or whole directories) so that they can't be viewed without supplying a key (password which you would choose before encrypting your files). You can tell the password to your friends and then they will also be able to decrypt and view the files. Hope this explains the basics. There are different types of encryption in existance, some can be easily broken, some can be broken with some effort, some can be only broken by governments with serious resources, some can't be broken at all (at this point). It's a fascinating topic. Earliest uses of encryption go back thousands of years.
You can encrypt/decrypt individual files or complete folders...the choice is yours.
Originally Posted by Firenze
KPDUTY, correct me if i'm wrong, but resco file explorer has to decrypt the whole folder before letting me browse through it, and that ain't what i need. or am i wrong?
It safekeeps your private information from prying eyes. Think of it as a safe where you keep your important papers (passport, marriage certificate, etc). While someone can see that you have a safe, they don't know what's inside nor can they access the contents without a key. You can make key copies and give them to your close relatives. Same with encryption software. It encodes files (or whole directories) so that they can't be viewed without supplying a key (password which you would choose before encrypting your files). You can tell the password to your friends and then they will also be able to decrypt and view the files. Hope this explains the basics. There are different types of encryption in existance, some can be easily broken, some can be broken with some effort, some can be only broken by governments with serious resources, some can't be broken at all (at this point). It's a fascinating topic. Earliest uses of encryption go back thousands of years.
Thanks for the explanation. Is there a downside to encryption? If I have a folder on a memory card with many sub-folders and hundreds of files is encryption going to slow down the speed of programs accessing those files or raise the risk of the card becoming corrupted?
Thanks for the explanation. Is there a downside to encryption? If I have a folder on a memory card with many sub-folders and hundreds of files is encryption going to slow down the speed of programs accessing those files or raise the risk of the card becoming corrupted?
It will slow down the access speeds since it does have to decrypt the contents. I haven't used it myself on my axim. However, I have used encryption on my pc and when it was accessing those directories or hard drives, it would be slower than if it had no encryption at all. Sometimes not much slower than without and other times quite a bit slower depending on total size and amount of files. As the card becoming corrupt. You have the same luck of a card becoming corrupt with or without Encryption. I haven't seen it increase the odds of a storage card becoming corrupt. How many files are you speaking of approximately? Also make sure you have plenty of backups. ;)
BTW, there is an alternative solution: maybe the best 'in the background' solution is Sentry 2020 for Pocket PC ( http://www.softwinter.com/sentry_ce.html ), if you don't use a PPC that has something similar already built-in (for example, the iPAQ hx2755) in the ROM.
Nice explorer but.. Ugh... no up-level icon option so no d-pad scrolling around your directories
Wrong on both counts. The up-level icon is on the bottom most toolbar, and the D-pad works as it should for folder and file scrolling. You did use the program, right?
for my desktop i use a great program called DriveCrypt, soi wondered if there's somethign similar our for my pda. what i want is for all information to be encrypted, untill such time as when i put in my password(s), after which i would be permitted to browse through and work with my info as if it was not encrypted at all
any suggestions?
SoftWinter makes a product, Sentry2020, that works pretty well. It is transparent to the program using it. It creates an encrypted volume in a file. When you "mount" that file, it shows up as another storage card and automatically decrypts/encrypts when applications read and write to it. After you “un-mount” the file (or after a programmable delay) you must re-enter the password or the data is inaccessible.
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