Hiding Sensitive Information

If you have information such as Personal Identification Numbers for ATM cards, the registration code for commercial software, or health information, you could store this in a Memo file and secure the file with a password. However, if some hacker wants to get at the information, they often can break the password protection. So, to further protect your information, rename the Memo file to something like DIRECTRY.COM or FILER. EXM. If a hacker uses a hex editor or a file viewer to look inside the file, the password protection will have turned the text into "garbage" which looks a lot like a typical .EXM or .COM file. A hacker might not guess that this is not an executable file and may give up. It's not a perfect solution to protecting sensitive data but it does keep it away from the casual hacker.

Philippe Lewis p.lewis@USA.NET