How To Hide Your Data-gctid43476

[Ajamu]

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How To Hide Your Data

Want to keep your private  files under wraps without making it obvious they're important? Rather  than encryption, try hiding them, so prying eyes don't even know they  exist.

We live in a world where   data  rules. Sharing your files, from docs to pictures to videos is as easy  as breathing. But we've all got some stuff that we'd like to keep to  ourselves. It could be data files that are so important to your company  that your job hangs in the balance. Maybe you have secret plans drawn up  on your home PC, and you don't want busybody siblings, parents,  spouses, or offspring peaking at them. Perhaps you travel and, on  principle, you don't want "The Man" getting into your stuff even  legally—customs agents and border patrol can delay you plenty if you  don't show them what they want. Occasionally, we all need to make sure  some of our important files aren't open to all.

   The typical method for file protection is encryption—the process of  turning your information into unreadable junk that can't be opened  without a password. However, encrypting a file is like sticking a red  flag in the data that says, "Look at me! I'm ever so important and  clandestine! Please, obsess over cracking my cipher! Decrypt me and  you'll know all my secrets."

Thankfully, there is a better way—one that can work hand in hand with  encryption. Camouflaging your data—and where you store it—can go a long  way to providing you with peace of mind. Plus, you'll never stir up  those snoops in the first place.

Get in the Cloud        
When we talk about hiding files, we typically mean they're still stored on your computer  hard drive but are invisible to digital peeping-toms. However, these  days, a quick way to keep files handy but not readily visible is to  store them in the cloud. The files remain hidden (the files aren't  physically with you), though you can access them anytime and anywhere on  any computer. The secret of keeping the data truly hidden is to erase  your browser history after accessing them and sign out of your cloud  storage accounts without saving passwords. In theory, no one will ever know you have files online to access.

This isn't the same as synchronizing data with the cloud and other computers, like you would with   Dropbox or SugarSync  or the like. Those services don't hide your files; in fact, they,  arguably, put them in more locations for people to find. To help hide  them, you could cheat a little by deactivating synching to your computer  for a limited period—say, when you're traveling—and then turn it back  on to get your files back on the drive later. But that defeats the  purpose of ongoing synch. (Some of the tips below can help obscure files  even when synched, however.).

There are a few ways to skin the cloud-storage cat, but right now the best services for the average computer user are:

•       Amazon Cloud Drive  (3 stars): You can store any kind of file, and if it's a music file  (MP3 or AAC), you can play it back easily with the Amazon Cloud Player  app. The allotment is 5GB for free and then $1 per GB per year (so about  $20 for 25GB a year). However, you can jump up to 20GB for "free" for a  year if you purchase one MP3-based album from Amazon. Note: This  service lacks sharing, backup, and online editing.

•       Google Docs (3.5 stars): It was once the place where you went to edit files created with the Docs apps. Now Google  lets you save any kind of file, too. You get 1GB free, but you can  upgrade to 20GB for $5 per year—a better price than Amazon Cloud Drive  but not as nice as Windows SkyDrive—and scale all the way up to 16TB for  a measly $4,096 per year. The extra storage you buy is also shared with  Gmail and Picasa for messages and pictures, respectively. Sharing is a  regular component, and Docs is all about online editing, but you'd have  to convert your files to its format during the file transfer to edit  them later.

•       Windows Live SkyDrive:  Free file storage of 25GB is hard to beat. If they're Microsoft Office  files, you can edit them online easily either by opening the files  instantly in the online Office app equivalent or at office.live.com (if  you use Internet Explorer as your browser). Sharing files with others is  a built-in feature.

Remember, most cloud storage is meant to be a backup of your local files. My suggestion, however, is to    move  files to the cloud. Leaving them on your hard drive means they're still  visible. The three services mentioned above excel at back up, as well  as acting as a cloud-based hard drive (albeit not as if they're a drive  letter in Windows Explorer), which will help keep your files on the down  low.

Basic File Hiding        
If you don't trust the cloud, that only leaves your hard drive for fast  access to files. So how do you keep those important files incognito?  There is a very basic way to hide something, even right on your Windows desktop: Make it invisible.

Here's how to activate a folder cloaking device in Windows XP/Vista/7:    
   1)    Folders typically need a name, even if it's super short. You can get  rid of the name though. Rename a folder on your desktop by highlighting  it. Hit F2 and type 0160 with the number pad (not the numbers above the  letter keys) while you hold down the Alt key. The numbers will NOT  appear to change. Press Enter. The name of the file will be blank.

Note: You can only do this to one folder on the desktop at a time, as  Windows sees no name as the name and won't let you duplicate folder  names.

2)    The name is gone but the folder icon is still there. Right click on  it and select Properties. Go to the Customize tab and click Change Icon.  Windows will give you a choice of icons to change it to; three of those  choices are blanks (you can find them about 12 columns from the right).  Click on a blank one and then click OK.

Your folder is now invisible on the desktop. You can then combine these steps with some basic encryption. For example, use    software  like WinZip, WinRAR, or 7-zip to create a file archive that is  encrypted with a password of your creation. That way, if someone does  find the folder you've concealed, that person still won't be able to get  to it. You can also change the file extension, from say .ZIP to .JPG,  to obscure that it's an archive.

   Caveats: If you do this to a folder inside another folder and view the  contents in list or details mode, the invisible folder will show up at  the top. The name is blank, but the space will be obvious. Also, on the  desktop, if someone clicks and drags with a cursor to highlight multiple  icons, the invisible one can be highlighted and thus be seen—like  throwing paint on the Invisible Man. So this method is free but far from  foolproof.

You don't have to do all this hiding yourself; you can also turn to software. Tools like    Hide My Folders (14-day trial is free and then $39.95) or My Lockbox 2 (free or $24.94 for Pro edition) promise to hide your valuable data on Windows. Mac users can try Altomac's Hide Folders (free or $24.95 if you want passwords on hidden folders).

Hide the Whole Drive          
Making a file or a whole folder invisible is one thing, but what if  you've got a hard drive filled with secrets? Interestingly, it might be  even easier to hide.

The simplest thing to do is make a Windows volume with its own drive  letter, whether it's a partition, a second internal drive, or an  external drive (even a USB drive), and hide the letter from Windows  Explorer. The open-source    No Drives Manager  does this, providing you with a list of drives from A to Z. Put a check  next to the drive you want to hide and click "Write current settings to  the registry." The software adjusts Windows, so after you log off and  back on again, that drive is no longer visible in Windows Explorer. When  you want to access it, go to a command line—you can use the search bar  in the Windows 7 menu—and type the drive letter with a colon to access  it. Because No Drives Manager changes the registry, you don't have to  install it. You can keep it on a USB key and run it as needed to hide or  unhide drives.

Note: This might not work if you use a Windows Explorer replacement tool.

Want to go the extra mile and add in some encryption? The free    TrueCrypt  software runs on multiple operating systems (Windows, Mac, and Linux)  and can encrypt parts of a hard drive or an entire drive partition.  What's more, it can create a volume on the drive that it not only  encrypts but hides.

Install and run TrueCrypt and the Volume Creation Wizard will appear.  Tell it you want to make an "encrypted file container" on a "standard  TrueCrypt volume." Put the volume anywhere except your C: drive (for  now, it doesn't matter where you put it, but remember the path to the  .TC file you create). Give the volume a strong-as-Hercules password. Let  TrueCrypt create an encryption key, click Format, let it go, and exit  the wizard. But wait, you're not done yet.

In a command line window (to get one, type CMD in the Windows search box) and type:    

Attrib D:    volume.tc +h

Make sure the path matches the one you used (we've shown an example  above). The "+h" makes it a hidden file, so it won't appear in Windows  Explorer.

Go back into TrueCrypt and you're going to mount the volume that you made and hide as a    virtual  hard drive using an unused drive letter. Again, type in the full path  to the .TC file and click Mount. Dismount when finished, again using  TrueCrypt. (The software offers to help you make a hidden volume inside  an obvious volume on the drive, but I couldn't get the hidden drive to  work.) TrueCrypt can even hide your entire operating system, so you end  up with two Windows installations—one for show and one for secret work.

Sharing What You Hide                      
Wikipedia calls steganography the "art and science of writing hidden  messages in such a way that no one, apart from the sender and intended  recipient, suspects the existence of the message." For our purposes, it  is a way of hiding data—for example, embedding a Word document inside a  JPG image—so that you can send it to people, and if intercepted, no one  would suspect that the carrier file contains obscured data. It's easy to crack if not encrypted, but the file could be just as secure by not calling attention to its self.

Luckily, there are some    software tools that can help you steganographize data. Hide in Picture, QuickStego, or the Mac-only Pict Encrypt  let you do exactly that by embedding data into an image file (the  receiver will need the same software to decode it). Hide in Pictures  goes an extra step, letting you embed entire files. There are other apps  that will hide data inside MP3 files and in text, HTML, and PDF files. StegoStick  is a freebie that promises it can do almost all of the above, hiding  files within files and password protecting the carrier file.

If you want to avoid software altogether, there's at least one    Webservice you can use. Ostensibly, Mozaiq is for building photo mosaics. That said, you can go to moaziq.com/encrypt, place a message into a password-protected image, and then have the carrier file's receiver get the message by visiting moaziq.com/decrypt.

Note: If you or anyone else adjust the file other than renaming it—for  example, resize, crop, or edit a JPG image containing hidden data—your  covert efforts are likely toast.

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