Lock Computer Data | Protect your personal data on computer | hide Data on your Computer
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.
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 using the Stenography 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 the simple copy command or make use of 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.