The security of personal data is one of the top concerns of every computer user. To answer this, we have discussed the different methods by which you can encrypt files, bookmarks, emails and many other ways to secure the data on your personal computer.
Times have changed and most of us today tend to save our data on cloud storage services like Dropbox. It’s not that they’re not secure, but stories of people breaking into such services or data being compromised due to security vulnerabilities have come to light in the past. Today we will see how we can easily encrypt the data that we store on our Dropbox account to make it more secure.
We will be using a nifty tool called BoxCryptor to encrypt our files in Dropbox. So let’s get started!
Set up BoxCryptor
Before we start encrypting files, we need to set up BoxCryptor.
Step 1: Download and install BoxCryptor on your computer. The installation is quite simple and does not take long to complete.
Step 2: Launch BoxCryptor after successful installation. If Dropbox is installed on your system, the tool will automatically detect it and create a folder inside it called BoxCryptor. Since this tool also creates a virtual drive in your system, you will need to specify a drive letter for that drive.
Step 3: In the next step, you will have to provide the password that will be used to encrypt and decrypt the data. Finally click ok to finish the setup.
Encrypt files
File encryption is easy with BoxCryptor, just copy all the files you want to encrypt to the newly created drive. Since the encoding happens in real time, you won’t see any of the same progress bars.
Once you have copied all the files to the drive, exit BoxCrypt using the program icon on the taskbar, which will automatically close the virtual drive and thus encrypt your data.
If you look inside the folders created by BoxCryptor at the time of installation, you will see some randomly named files. These are the files you just encrypted.
decrypt files
Just run the program again and provide the password you set. The virtual drive will automatically open with all your files decrypted on the fly.
Some points to note
- Never use Remember Password option while using above app. If you do so, there is a high risk that your data may be compromised.
- After installing the application, you will see an XML file in the folder you created. Please do not delete this file.
- BoxCryptor can detect your Dropbox folder by default, but you can change the default settings to use it with any folder.
- The free version comes with a 2GB limit. You can purchase the app to get unlimited access.
My judgment
The first thing that struck me about this app was the real-time encryption. Unlike other software, one does not need to wait hours or minutes for the file to be encrypted or decrypted.
So, if you are looking for an easy way to encrypt your data in the cloud or even locally, then BoxCryptor is not a bad choice. If you know of any other such tools, let us know in the comments.
Categories: How to
Source: thpttranhungdao.edu.vn/en/
