Espionage Review: Easily Secure Your Files
- Application Associations and Templates
- Encryption-less Protection
- Not necessarily needed
- Free (but not as user friendly) options are available
Security on the Internet has been a big issue for a while now. It is fairly common because the hacker or scammer does not need to be at the same location as you. But there is also the issue of keeping your computer safe. If you have no protection, and it gets stolen, all your data can be read by others. Even if you just go to the bathroom at Starbucks and leave your computer unwatched, there is potential risk. Although these types of theft are fairly uncommon, you may still want to secure yourself. An application that can help you with this is Tao Effect‘s Espionage.
Espionage’s biggest advantage over other security software is its Application Templates and Application Associations. Instead of having to encrypt your Mail folder, and then decrypt it whenever you want to read your Mail, Espionage does this automatically for you. Just go to File>Application Templates… and choose Mail. You will then choose a password and choose what type of encryption to use. AES-256 is more secure than AES-128, but it is not needed for everything, and it takes longer to encrypt and decrypt. It should really only be used for extremely secret documents. Once you click Go, you will be prompted with the Application Associations window. This allows you to edit the password for the application, the location and the type of encryption. If you click Edit Application Associations, you will be prompted with a sheet that allows you to set the application to Lock on Quit and to have it launch at startup. This is different from a regular ‘Launch at Startup,’ because this actually delays the application’s startup so Espionage can unlock its folder. So, do not set an application to launch at startup in System Preferences if you are using Espionage to secure its data“Use Espionage’s ‘Launch at Startup.’ You can do this process not only for Mail.app, but for 17 other apps too.
But, what if an application whose data you want secured is not in the list of Templates? Well, you can just create your own Application Association. If you go to the Application Associations window (command-L), you can create your own Associations. If you want to secure MarsEdit’s data, just drag the data (~/Library/Application Support/MarsEdit) onto the window. You will then be prompted with a sheet that allows you to choose the encryption, password, and associated application. In this case, the associated application would be MarsEdit. You have now created your own Association. So, although Espionage only comes with 18 Templates, you can make Associations for any application you wish (so long as it stores its data on your hard drive…).
Espionage does also allow you to do normal file encryption. You just drag the file (or folder) on Espionage’s window, choose the encryption type, but just don’t specify an Association. Every time you try to access the folder, Espionage will ask you for your password.
With Espionage, you can also easily backup all encrypted folders. If you go to the Backup tab of Espionage>Preferences…, you can specify all the options for the backup. And, you don’t have to backup all of your encrypted files, you can just choose which ones you want. You can also specify when to backup.
Espionage also includes a rather interesting feature for an encryption app. It allows you to do encryption-less protection. When you create a new folder encryption, if instead of choosing AES-128 or AES-256, you choose No Encryption, Espionage will not actually encrypt it. What it does do, however, is make it much harder for someone to access it. They still could (if they knew how), but if you are leaving your computer for 2 minutes to go to the bathroom (and it’s locked in place), this may be the best choice.
Tao Effect‘s Espionage retails for $24.95 and you can download a free, 14-day trial from their site. It provides easy encryption with many built-in Templates and Application Associations. If you are concerned about the security of your computer, you will want to check it out to see if it is unobtrusive enough for you. If you think about it, the $24.95 might pay for itself if your computer is every compromised.
I really like the idea of having easily accessible encrypted folders on my harddrive and therefore bought this handy little application.
The developers are also very quick in replying to any support question you might have.
Greetings
When,oh when will people understand there is on elegant solution to folder encryption, unless it is supported natively by the file system?! So, we have to wait for Apple to either implement file encryption in the HFS+, or to completely switch to ZFS.
I really dislike applications moving my (supposed to be secret) data all over the place, without me knowing that. And that is exactly what this application does. It makes hidden sparse disk image out of your encrypted folder and move original to trash. Worse, once you “unlock” your “locked” folder, the disk image mentioned is mounted, the original folder is deleted and replaced with symlink to mount point.
And now cream on top of the cake: move your “unlocked protected folder” (symbolic link actually) to the trash. Empty the trash. You’ll continue your life believing your secured data are deleted forever, nobody can see them. The sad reality is that encrypted sparse (encrypted though) image is still eating your disk space and will continue doing so (‘cos you can’t see it easily). Even worse, the disk image WILL REMAIN MOUNTED as long as you don’t logout or reboot. It just take someone to browse into /Volumes directory and have full insight into your secret and “protected” data.
Off course, one could say “off course you’ll logout and when another person login with different name, the disk image will be unmounted”. Correct, but why do I need to “lock” a folder in such a case anyway?
A-? I don’t think so.
If you use an “Application Template” the folders get unlocked as soon as you quit the application and if you want to lock a folder manually you just righ-click it and choose “Lock”.
I don’t really understand where the problem with this approach is.
@milke, actually that’s not true since it uses UNIX permissions to protect the mounted folders, another user can’t access them in /Volumes.
Okay, “lock” a folder manually and then:
1. “Unlock” it with correct password (notice how its icon gets symlink/alias arrow badge in the left-bottom corner.
2. Move to trash that unlocked folder.
3. Empty the trash (at this point one would assume all content “that used to be protected hence is very important” is permanently deleted, so nobody can see it any more).
4. Open Terminal.app and type “cd /Volumes” (no quotes) and press ENTER.
5. Type “ls -la” in the terminal and press ENTER. You’ll see in a list a directories, some of them contain “mounted” or “espionage” or something like that (I can’t check it now since my trial period expired and I didn’t purchase) in their name.
6. Type “cd that_espionage_mounted_name_I_explained_above” and press ENTER.
7 Type “ls -la”, press ENTER and there you go; all your secured and secret files you thought you’ve permanently deleted are right there in front of you, waiting to be opened.
@milke Of course they are, how else would you be able to view them?? You unlocked the folder, so now it’s unlocked, and as the owner of the folder, you can view its contents.
@ itistoday
Please, read the first two steps of my previous post. Ordinary user would think that the (used to be locked) folder is PERMANENTLY DELETED.
@milke Maybe that’s true for a few users, but most Mac users that I know personally understand what an “alias” is, and so when they see that arrow icon they know it’s not the folder. And even if they do get confused, I think it’ll be pretty clear to them what happened if they do anything with the folder from the app itself.
Do you have a better idea of how this should be done? I see that you mentioned ZFS, I don’t know much about that, but that would require users to reformat their drive, and as far as I’m aware ZFS doesn’t have these sorts of capabilities built-in.
No, I don’t have a better idea of how it should be done, as a matter of fact I think there isn’t one. I wrote in my first comment: “there is no elegant solution to folder encryption, unless it is supported natively by the file system”. Unfortunately, I made a typo, so it turned out being “there is on elegant solution…”.
I really have got nothing against these guys and this app, I just think it’s misleading. It is NOT folder encryption as it claims to be. Perhaps it’s just me, but I don’t want an application moving my data around while misleading me they are still somewhere else. And I certainly don’t want to hunt for invisible sparse disk images to delete them once I deleted link to them (for which the app tried to misled me again as being the original folder). I’d rather prefer app offering me a possibility to make modifiable encrypted sparse disk image, so I clearly see where my secured and where my original data is.
The reason I mentioned ZFS is because it supports file/folder encryption on the file system level. And that’s, in my opinion, the only way to implement real folder encryption when a folder really stays being that particular folder, not being replaced with link to some dislocated content.
Perhaps we’ll just have to agree to disagree then, because for me this application does exactly what it says — it encrypted my Mail folder. I don’t know of any other app that lets me encrypt my email. It certainly would be cool if Apple brought ZFS to OS X though, but for now you can’t use it for your boot volume.
HI Mike and all,
you wrote that there is no elegant solution to folder encryption, unless it is supported natively by the file system… but i have to say
that the most easy way to save your files and secure any kind of data is by using secure USB drive! You can take SanDisk secure drive
and control it from anywhere.
Diana. N
Fort lLauderdale
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Thanks for sharing great insights to us,your reader.
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The Espionage removal tool didn’t work for me and now I’m having trouble removing remaining files from the application. I ran the removal option from the Espionage menu and it failed each time I tried it. I restarted and it still didn’t work. I now have iSpy and EspionageHelper running (invisible) on my Ma and the Espionage app stuck in my trash!
I agree with milke.
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