Forums Help & support "Old" passphrase and account password Reply To: "Old" passphrase and account password

#3747 Reply

Svante
Spectator

Hello Barkeley!

You are so right, lot’s of confusion. Even you still have some confusion. We were to be honest taken by surprise by how hard this obviously is. We’re continuously working with improving the software as points of pain become clearer, both how we write tips and texts, and how the program actually works.

AxCrypt was and is still a password based encryption software. In AxCrypt 2 we use the password for a little more things, but it’s still in the end, just that. A file encrypted with a password.

One part of the confusion is that we now require that password to be associated with a verified email address. This is for several reasons. This in turn causes more confusion, because that password is often not the same as the password used for old AxCrypt files, especially not if you have more than one password used for old files, then it can’t be the same as all of them of course.

Some points in your post that needs clarification:

You write: “If it is easy to reset your forgotten password account by the “I forgot” feature via e-mail, warning is needed about the fact you will not be able to open file with the old account password.

There is a big red warning, but the warning is not about “not be able to open a file with the old password“. Depending on what you mean, that’s not the case either. A file that was encrypted using a given password is always encrypted with that password, and you can always open the file with that password. It can also be opened with the account password, *unless* you do a password *reset* on the account. Then it can’t be opened with the new account password (*unless* of course that new account password just happens to be the same that the file was originally encrypted with ;-).

You write: “To open 1.7 files I then need two passwords, first the account then the 1.7 file password.” No, you do not. Only the first time. AxCrypt will by default convert opened old 1.7 files into version 2 files, using the account password. There’s also a function to batch convert many files at once. Thereafter you’ll only need the account password, and only once per session.

You write: “I regret not to be able anymore to use short-easy-to-type password for some files and up-to-13 digits with mixture of signs for very sensitive datas.

Please read http://www.axcrypt.net/blog/use-of-different-passwords/ for a longer explanation of why we do not support this scenario, and why we don’t think it’s a good idea to start with.