Encrypting & Decrypting Files Without Software

The computer now a days have become a basic necessity in our life. It is our partner in professional field as well as in our personal life. Thus we keep huge amounts of personal and confidential data in our computer. To prevent access to these confidential data comes the use of encrypting a file. If a file is encrypted others cannot access the file.
[Related: Protect Your Text Document From Hackers By Encrypting]

Need of encrypting files in Windows :

The primary reason that lies behind encrypting a file is security. When you have any confidential or private data or file which may be a document, a picture, or any video and you do not want any body to access that file in your absence then you should opt for encrypting a file. You may think of setting a password for your computer but a password is not so much reliable as it can be decoded or bypassed by many without much difficulty. So it is highly recommended that inspite of having password protection you should also keep knowledge of encrypting a file.
There are basically many methods of encryption:

1. Encrypting a file without any software or third party tool.
2. Encrypt a file online.

We shall discuss each of these processes in detail below :

Encrypt a file in windows without any software or third party tool :

To encrypt a file in windows without using a software just follow the steps described below:
1. Select the file that you want to block and right click on it. Select “Properties”. In the window that opens up navigate to the option “Advanced” under the tab “General”.

2. From the given list that appears check the box entitled “Encrypt contents to secure data” and then click on “OK”.

3. After finishing with the above click on “Apply” and then you should see a pop up window appearing with a warning message which looks like the one shown below. In the window you should select between two options namely encrypting a file only and encrypting a file along with parent folder. Select the one as per your requirement.

4. Click on “OK” and then you are done with your job.
After this operation has been performed if any user tries to copy, move or delete that file he will see an error message like :

If the user tries to open or view the encrypted file he will again receive an error message like :

Keep it in knowledge that encrypting files or folders on a volume that uses the FAT file system is not possible.

Encrypting and Decrypting files Online :

This is another one of the procedures for encrypting a file without using any software but using the web i,e online. What you need to do here is just browse File-encryptor. When you open the link you will be taken to a page where you should choose the file that you want to encrypt and set a password. On completing with the above just click on “Encrypt”.Your job is done!!!. You will be given to download an encrypted version of the file which you can safely keep in your system. You can also decrypt the encrypted files from this website.
What about you? Do you like to keep your confidential data in encrypted form? Share with us at the comment section.