A possible encryption solution

Hi all,

I'm new here... just got wind of all the portable possiblities and really liking it. I've placed a bunch of apps and such on a 40gig portable drive, one of which is Thunderbird Portable. Being concerned with security since I routinely leave passwords and account info in my inbox, I looked for encryption options. I really like Cryptainer and other options that mount as a drive but found that it required admin rights, which can obviously be an issue.

I'm offering up a free solution that can be modified to suit your own needs. I used PStart because of it's ability to launch programs on start and exit. In addtion I use EncryptOnClick because it has a command line interface. You can find it here: http://www.2brightsparks.com/freeware/freeware-hub.html

Thunderbird is installed in the PTB folder on the root of my portable drive, and EncryptOnClick in the EOC folder of root. A third folder, BATCH resides to hold the batchfiles used to semi-automate things.

Now I originally had encrypted the entire Tbird folder but this was unnecessarily lengthy as only the Data folder is critical.

Here is a copy of Thunderbird.bat, which launches the mail client. It first checks to see if there is an encrypted file in the Data/Profile folder and if there is, calls EncryptOnClick to do it's thing. Otherwise it falls through to just launch the app.

----------------
@echo off
%1
if EXIST Errors.txt del Errors.txt

if NOT EXIST \PTB\data\profile\*.eoc GOTO Tbird

:Decrypt
\EOC\EncryptOnClick.exe -u -d %1\PTB\Data\

DIR "Errors.txt" | FIND /I " 0 Errors.txt"
if errorlevel 1 GOTO Error

:Tbird
start %1\PTB\ThunderbirdPortable.exe
GOTO End

:Error
start notepad.exe "Errors.txt"

:End
------------------

When using this from PStart, be sure to pass the parameter %pdrive% or the routine will fail. If an error is detected in decryption, notepad will report it to you.

A second batch file called "encryptif.bat" does just that. It looks in the Data/Profile folder to see if there are any encrypted files. If so it exits. If there are none, it calls EncryptOnClick to lock things up. Again, pass the %pdrive% parameter from PStart:

---------------
@echo off
%1
if EXIST Errors.txt del Errors.txt

if EXIST \PTB\data\profile\*.eoc GOTO End

:Encrypt
\EOC\EncryptOnClick.exe -u -e %1\PTB\Data\

DIR "Errors.txt" | FIND /I " 0 Errors.txt"
if errorlevel 1 start notepad.exe "errors.txt"

:End
---------------------

Again, if there are errors, notepad will tell you. I don't actually call this batch file but I do place it in PStart with instructions to launch on exit. When PStart is shut down this batch file runs and encrypts if it's necessary.

It wouldn't take much to adapt this to encrypt other folders, but it would be time consuming to do the entire drive this way on every insert and remove. When I'm not using my drive for email I don't have to wait for the encryption/decryption process to take place.

Hope this help those looking for a way to keep things safe. If there are other encryption tools that have a command line interface I'm sure it wouldnt take much to make them work. EOC was just the first (only) free one I found.