Last year was an eye opening year that showed everyone how government agencies all around the world keep a close watch on our email messages, chat texts, SMS messages and so on. It appears that your private life is no longer private and the government agents can read your email messages any time they please. The very least you can do to prevent unnecessary snooping of such agencies into your private life is to encrypt the text before sending it through email messages so that only the intended recipient can read it. While there are many text encryption tools available, the easiest tool we found is the CTI Text Encryption.
CTI Text Encryption is a simple Windows application that allows you to easily encrypt any type of text using the powerful AES 256 bit cipher. It is very unusual in its approach towards using the passwords. Unlike other similar programs, it does not use one but four different passwords which is a good way to secure your data against brute forcing or dictionary attacks.
As you launch this program, you would see a very confusing interface without any explanation about different controls and text boxes. But when you hover your mouse over the buttons, then you start to get the general idea. In the four text boxes on the top, you have to enter your four passwords. Since it uses four passwords in a particular order, you can use even not-so-strong passwords. For example, you can enter your dog’s name, your best friend’s hair color, your mother’s shoe size and the chocolate brand you like the most.
The bottom two text boxes are for encryption and decryption of texts. The first box labeled “Normal Text” takes plain text and you can click on the Encrypt button on the right side to quickly encrypt it. The encrypted text will be shown in the bottom-most text box labeled “Encrypted Text”. You can copy it to the clipboard using the buttons given on the right side of the CTI Text Encryption window.
Once the text is encrypted, you can email it to your friends or acquaintances, post it on forums, on your blog or just save it in a text file on your computer. The intended recipients of the the encrypted text can decrypt it using the CTI Text Encryption tool if they know all the four passwords. For decryption, they have to enter the four passwords in the correct order, paste the text in the lower-most text box and click on the Decrypt button on the side. The decrypted text shall be shown in the “Normal Text” box.
Conclusion: CTI Text Encryption is a free, portable and easy to use text encryption tool that can be used to quickly encrypt your sensitive messages before sending them online to your friends or business partners.
You can download CTI Text Encryption from http://ctiencrypt.codeplex.com/.