Forums Community Unhappy with version 2 Reply To: Unhappy with version 2

#7865 Reply

Cody

With millions of downloads, Version 1 was very popular, and for good reason.

Millions of downloads over nearly 20 years. It was a product of its time, originally developed before encryption became ubiquitous. Today most software includes encryption facilities; Microsoft Office encryption is now unbreakable compared to its predecessors, allows per-file passwords and using it is compatible with all platforms (MacOS, iOS, Android). Even modern PDFs use unbreakable encryption.

AxCrypt 1 solved a problem which existed in the ’90s/early ’00s – AxCrypt was offering strong encryption long before Microsoft were.

Most people still aren’t using encryption, and, when they do it’s almost always the transparent type (TLS).

There’s no need for sockpuppets…

Every time somebody submits a comment on here, you consent to Google reCAPTCHA storing data-points about you. There are multiple comments, under different names, using the same/very similar data-points. Genuine, new, comments have a unique data-point but we digress.

…there are undoubtedly countless thousands of people who feel as I do

 

Assuming this were true then AxCrypt 1 would have been forked (it’s open source) and be maintained by another developer. The truth is very few people want the functionality of AxCrypt 1 any more.

Businesses transmit data internally over secured networks, they send clients encrypted links to secure, audited, clouds and they don’t rely on AxCrypt.

Individuals sending over email can use the in-built encryption of their software such as Microsoft Office or just rely on the transparent TLS encryption of email.

…and who are very disappointed that it has been abandoned in favor of a very different application that works very differently and that doesn’t have those popular features and costs money – every year! – to use

AxCrypt 1 is freeware. AxCrypt 2 is freemium.

As you said yourself, Svante is the developer of the software. The guy has to pay his bills. Can you begrudge him for charging? There’s a free option for those that don’t/can’t pay.

AxCrypt 1 has been around for nearly two decades; should it be his lifelong ambition to constantly update legacy software for which he receives no payment for?

To prove that there’s no/little interest, go and start a GoFundMe (or alternative) campaign and see how many few people are prepared to pay.

It’s moot now anyway, because no email application or web interface will allow you to send an .exe file.

They’re blocked because they’re unsafe. Even if a person is expecting a .exe file from you, they have to trust that your computer isn’t infected with viruses. It’s easy enough for a virus/malware to slip past your AV software (unknown to you), infect your programs and then infect your recipient.

Even if you’ve told them to expect a .exe file they still have to blindly trust the integrity of your computer. With .axx files because there’s no executable the user can decrypt it and then it’s immediately scanned by their AV software. With an .exe they must instruct their AV to ignore the file and arbitrarily execute (it’s essential for decryption) and then it’s too late.

If you want to store your own files on a DVD/USB and want to be able to extract them on another computer then just bundle the single, portable AxCrypt 2 executable. It’s digitally signed by AxCrypt, doesn’t cause virus alerts and doesn’t need to be installed.