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should I encrypt my documents?
The
increasing ability to connect to the Internet from a home computer has enriched
many households by providing them with new sources of information and
entertainment.
On the other hand, hackers increasingly probe connected computers for weaknesses
in their security and can gain access, hence stealing confidential information
without the user even realizing it.
Furthermore, Trojan Horse programs and Spywares
come from seemingly innocent sources. Once the user launches them, they can
begin secretly sending data - including any sensitive personal or financial
information stored on the PC - back out over the Internet.
Traditional security products such as virus scanners do not provide adequate
protection against unknown threats and the thousands of mutations and variations
of Spyware and viruses available to hackers on the Internet.
Now, for your peace of mind, if you want your private
data to remain as such, well hidden from
everyone, encrypt it! With keys up to 2048
bits and its very strong encryption algorithm,
CryptUp will provide complete security for your files, whether they are
pictures, mail, credit cards codes, password for your on-line bank account or...
anything you may think of!
Why
should I "shred" my documents?
When you
delete a file, it is not physically destroyed. Its name is removed from the
Master File Table (MFT) for NTFS formatted volumes or from the File Allocation Table
(FAT), the "Table of Contents" of your disk, so to say, but the
sectors containing your data remain on your hard disk and can be recovered!
In fact, the sectors, organized in clusters, still contain your data until
another file overwrites them. However, one can never know when the sectors will
be overwritten. Besides, a large cluster, in which a file will have overwritten
only one sector, can indefinitely keep the data of the previous file contained
in the remaining sectors of the cluster, making it accessible to a "would
be" hacker. Anyhow, a file destroyed with the Delete
command, even when it is NOT sent to the Windows Recycle Bin, can
always be restored at some point in time. Incidentally, file recovery
utilities make use of this characteristic to restore accidentally deleted files.
To palliate this risk, CryptUp has a built in shredder
that erases all the data in all the sectors of all the clusters of the file you
want to delete. Doing so, your shredded file will be irremediably
and definitively destroyed, whatever the means, existing or to come,
used to try to restore it.
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