Forums Help & support Wrong Password? Reply To: Wrong Password?

#7449 Reply

Svante
Spectator

Hello Toni,

All the users in this threads underlying problem is that they do not know the password. It really is not related to the new version not working. It’s about not knowing which password to use. Sometimes it’s because you’re trying to open a file you haven’t opened in a while, and it’s only now that you realize that the password you thought you used does not work. An easy way to verify this is to re-install the old version. If you’re still getting ‘wrong password’ – then the password is wrong! You can also check the modification time of the file. If the modification time is before you upgraded and you’re now getting ‘wrong password’ – then the password is wrong!

There are many more scenarios, but always if the software says the password is wrong – you should really assume it is! While AxCrypt is far from perfect, no software is, it’s been used in both version 1 and 2 by millions of people for almost 2 decades. So far there is not a single case where a passsword has just stopped working without the file being modified between the last successful attempt and the first failed.

Since we’re all interested in having everything work – you want your files to open, and we want you to be happy and like AxCrypt let’s concentrate our efforts where all evidence points us. Not at the software suddenly stopping to acccept or recognize a previously working password, but at the password itself.

You write:

Once I enter the DIFFERENT password (than the one protecting my files) which is the one I used to create an account on Axcrypt.net (I’m still on the free version), I apparently doesn’t need anymore any password to decrypt SOME files: I just have to select the option “Decrypt” and it decrypts it without asking any password as it used to do… (Also, when I want to encrypt a file, it doesn’t ask me any password :S )

But for SOME OTHER files, it still asks for a password and still keeps telling me the password is wrong!!!!

This describes the situation exactly where you have used different passwords for your files. One of the passwords, which is the one you sign in with to your account, is also used for some of your files. Other files, are encrypted with a different password, and thus AxCrypt will ask for it when you try to open it.

If you examine the modification times of the files, you’ll very likely find that they were encrypted before the upgrade, and you’ll find ‘clusters’ of files with similar times. All in a given cluster will probably either open or not. All indicating that the files were in fact encrypted with different passwords.

This situation is exactly the reason for the changed behavior in AxCrypt 2, where we sign you in and then use that same password for encryption. We now have a verification that the encryption password really is the same as the one you used last time, which reduces the risk of all this immensly.

AxCrypt 2 works just like your email software or most other password-protected systems. You sign in once, and remain signed in until signed out. Just like you can read many emails without entering the password every time, AxCrypt will do the same. The files are still encrypted, but your password is remembered until you sign out of AxCrypt.