How to Password Protect your Files and Folders

Hello Friends., Do you have files and folders on your computer that you absolutely don’t want anyone else to see? I mean some important or personal files and data, or do you even carry important documents on those easy-to-misplace USB drives?

If the answer is yes, you should download a copy of SafeHouse Explorer – it’s a free and easy-to-use file encryption utility that will hide all your private files from prying eyes in few easy steps. You may use the tool to password protect files that are residing on your computer’s internal hard disk or even on external USB drives. Also check Subscribe to Password-Protected Feeds inside Google Reader.

TUTORIAL:- ENCRYPT AND PASSWORD PROTECT YOUR FILES AND FOLDERS

SafeHouse Explorer, in simple English, works something like this. It creates a hidden storage area on your disk to hold all the files that you want to protect. These files and folders are hidden from normal view and will only become visible when you enter the correct password.

Here’s a more detailed tutorial on how you can protect your files with SafeHouse Explorer.

Step 1: Download and install the SafeHouse Explorer program to your hard-drive.

The software works with XP, Vista and Windows 7 (both 32 and 64-bit editions). It is also portable so you may run it directly without installation.

Step 2: Once the installation is complete, click the “New Volume” button to create your hidden storage that will house your various files and folders.

You may either create one large volume to store all the “private” files or you can create multiple smaller-size volumes each corresponding to the type of files that they’ll store. For instance, you may have one volume for storing confidential documents and spreadsheets while another one could be for hiding those “personal” pictures and so on.

For step 2b, choose a volume size based on the size of the folders that you’ll be storing inside that volume. The “Pre-initialize Volume with Random Data” basically means that your virtual drive will be filled with random data if there aren’t enough files to fill complete that volume. Use the default “on” setting.

Also Read:- 

• Create a Public Folder Where Anyone Can Add Files
• Create Direct Links to your Files on Google Drive
• How to Share Files Between Mobile Phones and Computers

Step 3. Now that your volume is created, open Windows Explorer (Win+E) and you’ll see a new “virtual drive” under My Computer. Just drag and drop any of your folders and files into this virtual drive and they’ll instantly get protected using encryption.

Once you have added all the files to the “protected” volume, make sure you delete them from the original location as the original copy is unencrypted and therefore anyone can open it without requiring a password.

Step 4. Switch to SafeHouse Explorer and choose File – > Close Volume to lock up the files.

Congratulations. You have successfully created your first encrypted and password-protected folder on your computer that you can only access after typing the correct password.

To access your protected files, simply navigate to the folder that houses your SafeHouse volumes and double-click the corresponding volume file to open it. Type the password and you should see all the files and folders under a virtual drive in Windows Explorer again.

Encryption is obviously a complex subject for most of us but what you’ll really like about SafeHouse Explorer is that it hides all the technical details from the end user.

ENCRYPT YOUR USB FLASH DRIVE AND EMAIL ATTACHMENTS

The tool will also be extremely handy for people who carry around important and confidential files on USB drives and external hard disks.

Instead of copying files and folders to your external disk directly, first encrypt these files on the hard-drive (as explained above) and then copy the encrypted volume (the .sksk file) to your external disk. Now even if the drive gets misplaced, the finder won’t be able to read any of your files and, since the software uses 256-bit encryption, it will be nearly impossible for anyone to crack your password.

Similarly, you can add an extra layer of protection to your sensitive email attachments with SafeHouse. Encrypt the files, send them as email attachments and communicate the password to the recipient over another medium (like phone).

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How to Hide the Data on your Computer

You may want to hide some files and folders on your computer for various reasons. Maybe you don’t want mom to accidentally stumble upon all the stuff that you have downloaded from the Internet. Or you share the home computer with an inquisitive brother and would not like him to view your private files. Or maybe it’s your work computer and you are worried that the system administrator may remotely access your files.

HIDE YOUR DATA FROM PRYING EYES

Here are some ways to hide your data on the computer from other people:

PUT YOUR SENSITIVE FILES IN THE CLOUD

The easiest approach would be that you use a USB Flash Drive to store your confidential files and not the computer’s hard disk. USB disks are inexpensive – you can get a 16 GB disk for less than $10 – and some are so thin that they will easily fit in your wallet like a credit card.

The next option is that instead of storing the files on a physical disk, you upload them online to places like Google Docs (1 GB), Windows SkyDrive (25 GB) or Box (5 GB). Dropbox is another good option for online file storage but because the service synchronizes files automatically with your hard drive, you may want to avoid it on a common computer.

You can also use your web email accounts to store files – attach files to a messages and email it to yourself. The maximum size of files that you attach to an email message in Hotmail is 10 MB while the limit is 25 MB in the case of Gmail.

If you are planning to store EXEs or other prohibited file types in your mailbox, make sure that you change the file extension before attaching as the Gmail scanner will otherwise reject your message.

HIDE FILES INSIDE PRIVATE (INVISIBLE) FOLDERS

If you wish to store your confidential files on the computer’s hard disk itself and not in the cloud, you have several options as well.

You can put all the secret files that you want to hide in one folder and then use a utility like My Lockbox to make that folder invisible on your hard disk. Once you hide a folder, it won’t appear in Windows Explorer and the only way to access the contents of that protected folder will be through My Lockbox.

The free edition of My Lockbox can lock one folder but if you would wish to hide multiple files or folders on your hard disk, use the free Winmend utility. Here you have the option to hide folders as well as individual files and someone will have to know your password to read, edit or erase any of these hidden files and folders.

HIDE FILES AND FOLDERS BY CAMOUFLAGE

Your curious friend is less likely to open a folder that resembles the Recycle Bin and even if he does, the real contents of that folder won’t be revealed.

That’s the logic behind Disguise Folders, a free Windows utility that you can use to easily disguises any folder as a system folder – like the Control Panel, Recycle Bin or even the Fonts folder. When you open any of these “disguised” folders inside Windows Explorer, they’ll open the folder corresponding to their appearance but if you open the same folder through Disguise Folders, it will reveal the actual content of that folder.

HIDE FILES USING THE STEGANOGRAPHY TECHNIQUE

The other option to hide files and folder on your computer is steganography – it’s like embedding documents, images, and other files into another unsuspecting file – like your kid’s photograph.

The idea is that you can embed your private files into another file which could be a JPEG image or an MP3 audio file. If you wish to hide an entire folder into another file, just compress into a zip file. When someone double-clicks these “container” files, the image or MP3 will open in the default media player but internally, they are hold all your private files.

You can hide files inside regular MP3s or JPG images using this free utility called Our Secret. It work like this. You pick a carrier file – it could be a JPEG image or an audio file – and then select one or more private files that you want to hide inside the carrier file. The next step is optional but you can also encrypt the contained files with a password.

Your private files will be secretly bundled inside the carrier JPEG (or MP3) and only when you re-open this carrier file inside Our Secret, the hidden files will be decoded. If you use the DOS copy command to hide the files inside another image, the contained files can be extracted using any Winzip like utility without requiring any special program.

THE MOST SECURE WAY OF HIDING FILES AND FOLDERS

While the above utilities do a decent job of hiding your files and folders on your computer, they aren’t the most secure choices available as they lack encryption. If you are really serious about protecting your files from snoopers and hackers, you should use a powerful encryption software like TrueCrypt or SafeHouse Explorer.

Once you launch SafeHouse, it creates a hidden storage area (or an encrypted volume) on your hard disk to hold all your private files and folders. The size of this volume can be adjusted based on your requirements. You can access this virtual drive just like any other drive inside Windows Explorer but the drive and the folders inside are completely invisible until you enter your password inside SafeHouse.

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