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.
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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. MCITP Training
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.