N82 Tips: Secure and Hide Files While Still Being Able to Access Them Easily

Posted By Aaron

As you may have remembered, hiding photos and videos from showing on your n82's gallery application has been already discussed here. In addition to setting files' system and hidden attributes, I just want to share additional tips on how to effectively limit access on valuable, personal and private files to yourselves only. ;-)

We can have our files hidden but the following are known concerns...

1. Files are not password protected, meaning, they can still be accessed by other users. This can be a mate, your sister, your best friend, or the girlfriend (scary, lol), especially if they are familiar with s60 and they happen to do the browsing and stuff using your faithful file manager application.


2. If we want to hide several files, hiding the parent folder will not do the job, so we will need to do it repeatedly on each and every file. (annoying of course)


3. Videos still remain visible on Video Center.

Solution:

Needless to say, we will need a third party file manager application, preferably one that allows the user to set a program password. You can use any application you want. The one I use is my favorite, X-plore. A great file manager application. You can download X-plore here.

If you are using X-plore, make sure that it is configured to display
System and Hidden Files. To do this, Select Menu > Tools >
Configuration (shortcut is 0).


Ensure that Show Hidden Files and Show system files/folders are
checked:

1. The first problem is easily addressed by the file manager's program password itself. Now no one will be able to (or accidentally) open your file manager and browse your hidden files without entering the correct password.
   
   To set the program password of X-plore:
   Select Menu > Tools >
   Configuration (shortcut is 0). Scroll down until you see the program
   password option, then select it.
   
   Enter a new password then hit Ok to save.
   
   There is another solution, that is to zip the files using the N82's built in Zip application and set a password. This is more secure but the problem is, speed and accessibility. It will take several minutes before you can completely zip a number of files and images or even a single video file! And of course another long wait on file extraction in case you want to access the zipped files again.



2. To hide several files easily:
   
   
   • Create a new folder, then set it as a System and Hidden folder.
     
   • Cut the parent folder of the files you want to be hidden, then move or paste it inside the folder you just created.
     
     To do this using X-plore:
     Highlight the location/folder where you want to place the new folder. Then
     select Menu > File > Make Dir (shortcut is 9).
     Then type the name of the folder and press ok. (in the example, ill create a new folder on root of my memory card and name it "My hidden files"):
     
     
     With the new folder currently highlighted, select Menu > File >
     Attributes (shortcut is 6). Check the Hidden and System
     box.
     
     To save the changes, select Change.
     
     To move the parent folder of your personal files, make sure it is highlighted then select Menu >
     Edit > Move (shortcut is 2). You should see a "Move marked to:
     .." caption at the upper part of the program:
     
     
     Then, highlight the folder you just created (in my case, My hidden files),
     select Menu > File > Select (shortcut is OK) to
     paste your personal files there:
     
   
   


3. The key on hiding videos from Video Center completely is to change your videos' file extensions. Anything will do, .aaa, .abc, or .yourname, lol. If you want to watch the videos again, just open the file using your third party file manager. Normally, it will automatically launch real player and play your video file regardless of the file extension. Still, make sure your videos are hidden and set as system files. This is also applicable to almost any type of file, .doc, .pdf, .txt, .sis, .flv, etc.
   
   In X-plore, highlight the file you want to rename then, select Menu >
   File > Rename (shortcut is 7). Change the extension, then hit Ok
   to save.

Hope this post helped. If you have some questions / problems, leave a comment and ill do my best to help you.

If you haven't heard, Aaron is a new addition to The N82 Blog. He will be writing articles here and helping make this site more useful to all N82 owners and Nseries fans. Click here to learn more about Aaron and welcome him to the community.