Tao Effect Forums

Hi there, thanks for a wonderful program.

I have a question/suggestion.

Is there a way to stop the notifications that are issued when entering a folder which contains a locked folder. For example in my Downloads folder I have another folder which contains client sensitive information and is locked, lets call it "clients". When I click Downloads in the Finder, I get prompted by Espionage to unlock the folder, pressing Cancel, or letting the dialog time out, results in a notification saying Access was denied. I have the preferences in the Notifications page unchecked (both of them).

The problem is that I don't want to give a clue that there are locked folders in the Downloads folder. I think this is a major security exposure, because now someone snooping knows there is a locked folder and might start looking for it and try to hack into it. I think it would be much more secure if I had to manually unlock the folder without any prompts that give hints to the the fact that there is locked stuff in there. Someone trying to open a locked folder should just see and empty folder. Security by obscurity, always a good idea.

If I have missed something here, please let me know. If this feature is not yet available,please consider adding it to your already great product.

...Peter

I should add though, that it is possible to disable all notifications (although we strongly recommend against doing so), and that is by telling Espionage to use Growl in the notification preferences, and then customizing the Growl notifications for Espionage in the Growl System Preferences.

Wow, I posted a reply to you and it hasn't showed up. Hope it didn't get lost. I'll wait a little longer and if it doesn't show up I'll post again.

This is in response to the Growl suggestion. I have done that and configuring Growl to disable notifications from Espionage works. But just disabling notification from the Espionage preferences does not.

Thanks Greg.

OK, here I go again...

In my case I do not have to double click on the locked folder to get prompted for the password. In my case, all I have to do is click on the parent folder. For example my clients folder is inside the Downloads folder. In Finder, just going from the Applications folder to the Downloads folder causes the prompt to unlock to show up. I think you were saying in your previous post that this not the expected behaviour and that I should only get prompted to unlock when double clicking the clients folder. I would be happy to send you a screen cam capture if you wish to see what I see.

Regarding the Security through obscurity comment... I agree that it should not be used as the sole security method, that would be just silly. My locked folders are not encrypted, just locked. So, when going to the parent folder, I do not think I should be asked to unlock. If I'm a snooper that is just a challenge to find out what folder out there is locked and what it contains. Even clicking the twisty should not prompt me, in my opinion, to unlock. I think It should be a more deliberate action that causes the prompt to appear, like double clicking, or accessing the Services menu. Clicking a locked folder should just an empty folder.

Thanks for listening.

...Peter

No problem!