If you have a computer and are connected to the Internet then your computer is in danger of having files stolen. While most of the files you have may be innocuous, if there is any personal information in them such as birthdays, social insurance numbers or financial data then you will want to make sure this information is protect from prying eyes. The easiest way to do this is to password protect your documents.
By placing a password on your important files you are ensuring that your documents are safe from those who would seek to exploit it, such as identity thieves. If you own a company you will want to do the same for your financial information as well as and documents that contain info about your clients. While you may not think it is important now, if the data should ever get stolen you will be thankful for it.
Now that we have covered how to keep your documents safe, what happens if you lose or forget the passwords? Obviously you dont want to use the same password on every document ” if someone ever guessed the password then all of your files would be at risk. At the same time using a different password every time will make it difficult to remember. Odds are at some point in time you are going to lose a password and need to access your files.
Luckily there are programs out there which are designed to help you recover your files should you forget the password. These programs, referred to as password recovery software, work in a few different ways to figure out what password you used.
Initially the program will try to open your document using a combination of letters and number to see if it can guess the right password. This may work to gain entry into your files, but if you used a long or complicated password that includes a variety of characters and symbols it may not succeed.
Next the software will try different combinations of letters, numbers and symbols to get into the file. If your password was short and simple then it should have no problem getting in, but if you use long, complicated passwords the software will need some time, and there is no guarantee that it will be able to find the right combination.
While there are many software programs offered for free, most people will have little success in getting these programs to access their files. Investing a few dollars will get you a much more streamlined program that will give you a much better chance of accessing your file, and in less time.
Password recover software can be used on many different types of files and even Windows itself, should you forget how to access your computer. Remember that you should only be using password recovery software to access your own files, as using it to open someone elses documents is against the law.
The next time you are password protecting your documents, consider opening a secure document and saving your passwords in there, then make sure that the password you place on that document is 1) easy to remember and 2) complicated enough that a software recovery program couldn’t open it. Then you wont have to worry about lost passwords or unprotected files.
Posted under Software
This post was written by Michael Mylar on December 30, 2008









