Keep The Files Private by using Windows XP Pro

Keep The Files Private by using Windows XP Pro

Written by Siddartha (701) on 27 November 2009 and received 2 Comments

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There’s only one way to keep your files truly confidential: Encrypt them. The Encrypting File System (EFS) in most versions of Windows Vista, XP, and 2000 scrambles the contents of files and folders, making it very difficult for snoops to read them. It’s easy to make encryption a part of your security arsenal.

If you want to encrypt the contents of an individual file or directory, Windows XP Pro will do the trick, provided you enable NTFS on your hard drive.

To encrypt a file,

Right-click on it to bring up the Properties window.
Click on the Advanced button,
Then in the Advanced Attributes dialog box click on Encrypt contents to secure data.
This will encrypt the file (using either DES, which employs a 56-bit key on each 64-bit block of data, or 3DES, which uses a 56-bit key three times on each 64-bit block of data), and it will provide a certificate just for you.
This certificate is key; if you reinstall Windows or otherwise lose your user account, your access to the encrypted files will be gone, too.
You need to export your certificates to back them up: For detailed instructions, search on export certificate in Windows Help.

Windows XP does not require you to enter your password when you open the encrypted file. Once you log on to a session, encrypted files are available for you—and anyone who walks up to your system—to view.

Windows XP Home doesn’t support this method. Both XP Home and XP Pro, however, let you create password-protected compressed files. To do this,

Right-click on the desired file and choose Send To – Compressed (zipped) Folder.
Open the resulting folder
Select Add a Password from the File menu;
Delete the original file. Note that this encryption is relatively weak.
It should dissuade casual users but won’t put up much of a fight against someone determined to hack it apart.

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Article by Siddartha

Siddartha has written 701 articles for us.

Siddartha is a part-time blogger, freelancer with over 3 years experience in Blogging. His interests are Blogging, Reading, Coding, Testing, Freelancing, WP, SEO and SMO addict. If you like this post, you can follow us on Twitter. Subscribe to GadgetCage Feeds via RSS or Email to get instant updates.

2 Comments »

venu madhav said:

hey siddu give more posts relating to win-7 . win-xp is ok. But many people are moving towards win7 as it is much better performance wise.
venu madhav´s last blog ..Trick to increase browsing speed in IE 6 and Firefox