To Your Health: Three Programs to Keep the PC Bugs Away Columbia SC
To Your Health: Three Programs to Keep the PC Bugs Away
Posted by : Joe DeRouen
If you keep sensitive data (your finances, for example) onyour Windows PC, you might want to consider encrypting your files oreven the entire hard drive itself. There are several programs out therethat will do this for you, but none are arguably better (and inarguablycheaper) than True Crypt.
True Crypt, a free, open-source diskencryption program for Windows XP, Windows 2000, and Linux, allows youto encrypt an entire hard drive, a USB device such as a flash drive, ora virtual disk within a file that mounts as a real disk. It provides upto 448-bit key encryption (via the Blowfish standard) and can encrypt ina variety of formats, including AES-256, Serpent, and TwoFish.
Sowhat does all of that mean to you? It means that, if you choose toencrypt your files, there's almost no chance of anyone decodingthem--including you if you lose your password!
Becausethere are so many things you can do with True Crypt--encode files, fileswithin virtual hard drives, flash cards, movies, MP3's and so on--theprogram's learning curve is pretty steep, but the interface is prettyintuitive and it's fairly easy to get started. If you want to encrypteverything on your external hard drive, for example, you just select thedrive via a drop down menu, decide which of the many differentencryption algorithm's you want to use, decide on a password, and letthe utility do its stuff.
The help files are incredibly thoroughand include an extensive beginner's tutoria...
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