Forums Community AxCrypt 2 makes me sad… Reply To: AxCrypt 2 makes me sad…

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Anonymous

I will not agree that I think AxCrypt users are stupid, ignorant or whatever was mentioned above. However, I have 15 years of experience dealing with support issues from a total of perhaps 10 million users.

Just to clarify I wasn’t trying to imply that the users were mentally inept, only that AxCrypt v2 seems to be built for the most forgetful, most likely to improperly configure, etc.

It’s a pattern of design that is becoming exceptionally common, software developers build for the worst possible user-scenario and usually that means restricting advanced users in order to prevent said user scenarios from being self-inflicted.

A very, very small percentage of these users have any issues at all. But from the ones that do, I have seen patterns of common mistakes sometime causing dataloss due to mistyped or forgotten passwords. Most of the things that AxCrypt 2 is criticized for above are functions defined as a result of specific, concrete and actual situations with actual users.

So, yes, AxCrypt is made to be encryption for the masses. The 99%. Not the 1%. I think the biggest reason why encryption is not more widely used is because 99% of the software, caters to the 1% of the users. I’m trying to change that.

True, I suppose I’m just frustrated with the rate at which advanced users are getting left out in the cold.

Kaspersky had a spin where they removed the “Advanced Settings” options and Microsoft has opted to force updates on everyone because some people won’t update, but as you can imagine the list goes on and it’s become a worrying trend.

I suppose the shock of AxCrypt 2 being a basic user program comes with the fact that everyone I have using it struggles to understand it. When they Encrypt their files they usually act shocked when it just opens as they don’t understand the concept of a cached key.

Speaking of Keys: Does AxCrypt v2 Utilize the password itself to encrypt files or does it operate as ProtonMail does and use a password purely for authentication and use a generated key to do the encryption?

AxCrypt installation with my family has gone something like:

1. Install AxCrypt.
2. Re-configure power settings so the machine returns to sleep\lock-screen after inactivity.
3. Ensure they create a strong password for their AxCrypt account as this is the password for encryption.
4. Ensure they know that anyone can access their data unless a sign-out is triggered via sleep\signout or done manually.

Barring the lack of multiple passwords I’d say that the possibility to “auto sign-out” based on time delay or termination of the child program is my second most important issue.

That being said I’ve actually moved from AxCrypt V1 to BCArchive as it’s pretty much exactly what I want though AxCrypt does do certain things better i.e. Secured Folders and Key Sharing. Suppose you can’t get everything you want though without writing it yourself.