AxCrypt: simple, free, strong, secure, encryption
After spending several hours compiling all my sensitive data into a Word document I was searching for a simple encryption solution to be able to share the data with others in a secure manner. I did a search for "file encryption" on Google and the second search result to come up was a SourceForge sponsored project: AxCrypt.

AxCrypt is free and easy to use open source strong file encryption for Windows, integrated within Windows Explorer. Encrypt, compress, decrypt, wipe, view and edit with a few mouse clicks.

The download is very small and the install takes no more than a minute. After install (no restart required) encrypting and decrypting files is easy. Right-click a file, enter a password, confirm the password that's it! The password is very secure and the file is encrypted. An additional keyfile may be used as well for even stronger encryption.

I tried AxCrypt on my document using the longest password I could think of, promptly forgot the password and locked all the data forever (not before spending 30 solid minutes trying every combination I could come up with however). So while I lost several hours of work and I've got an encrypted document on my hard drive with no possible way to open, at least I know the software does what it's supposed to.

From the FAQ: The basic rule is this - If you loose or forget your passphrase or key-file, your documents are lost. There is no back-door into AxCrypt. The only way to recover a lost passphrase is to try all likely combinations. If you have used a key-file, and lost that, there is nothing to do at all - the number of combinations is simply too large.

So there you have it.

AxCrypt: simple, free, strong, secure, encryption

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