Messages

Hi Espresso,

I'm glad it was helpful for you as it should be. I think you're right, it should include a note to stop Espionage before proceeding. We'll update it as soon as we can. Thank you for your suggestion.

Done.

Initially, following directions, espionage wouldn't start with the helper app dragged to the desktop. (The old helper app was still running.)
Had to manually kill the helper app from activity monitor, then restart esp. At that point, the helper app was re-installed in the library path.
New helper app is dated 6/3 (orig 5/31), and is slightly larger than the original version. (Probably could have stopped espionage from the preferences, too.)

Thanks.

Hi sjf_control,

I assume everything is working now?

On behalf of Greg, you're welcome.

Hi bit,

The Filevault service is transparent to your applications including Espionage. So, it'll behave just as if there was no filevault running on the machine with one exception. The exception is that the system overall is a bit slower because of the constant encryption in the background.

One of the reasons people choose Espionage is to avoid using FileVault but if you'd like to use both at the same time, that's not a problem at all. You shouldn't have any issues doing this.

Espionage does let you choose a separate keychain, so that you don't have to use your Mac account password to unlock Espionage in addition to the Filevault's password.

Hi Marty,

Yeah, I'm aware of the "lock on quit" functionality and that's great stuff.  The meat of my proposal is that I want to have an application association which unlocks the store when the app is launched, but instead of asking for a password it unlocks it automatically (since the password is stored in the already unlocked Espionage keychain), and have the store lock automatically when the app is quit (as it does today).

Make sense?  Am I missing this as a currently available feature?

Cheers,

Levi

Hi Levi,

What you're saying does make sense to us. You're looking for the "unlock automatically upon app's launch and lock upon quit" and it should remember the password stored within the Espionage or OS X keychain type of setup. It is not currently supported at the moment, we might support it in a future update but like I mentioned before, I do not have a timeframe on this.

I was eventually able to take the folder out of Espionage control and get most of the data back (lost all my email signatures) so I'm not in panic mode anymore.

Mark Jacobs

I'm glad to hear that, I'm sorry that you were in the panic mode in the first place and that this happened. We'll continue to investigate into this and see what happened in the first place. We'll work with you via email.

Hi Mark,

I think you emailed us about this issue, did you? I responded to your email but I am not sure if you're a different Mark Jacobs. :)

We do plan to overhaul our current Backups system and your suggestion on the "Keeping 'n' backup copies" is one of the ideas that we want to add to Espionage.

As for the preventing this, I want to understand what happened first before we go ahead. See my email about this first.

Thanks!

Hi Nancy,

We received your report. Thank you. I think there might be an issue with iPhoto '08 but we're looking into it right now and we'll get back to you as soon as we can.

Hi

What are the problems with using bidrectional sync in the locked folder mode?

Hi socrates,

The nature of the encryption and the sparsebundle is that the entire sparsebundle (locked folder) needs to be consistent, if one tiny piece is out of place, the data integrity is no longer guaranteed and it can result in total data loss for that sparsebundle. That's why we recommend only one-way sync. If the bi-sync sync the changed parts inconsistently, there's no way to recover from this. If you change some files on one computer, then changed something else on the second computer and then sync bi-directionally, there is no way to determine which files were the right one, the encryption makes it very hard to see that.

Is it a problem to "Allow Package Selection" when syncing?

I have some big sparse bundles and would like to change only whats changed and not the whole thing.

Thanks.

I'm checking with Greg to confirm this but I don't think there should be any problems doing this as long as you only sync one way and you didn't modify the sparsebundle on the destination before syncing.

Hi Nancy,

In order for us to determine what went wrong, we need a look at your logs. Can you download our diagnostic tool which will collect the logs for you and upload it to us. The link to the tool is here:
   http://www.taoeffect.com/other/TEDiagnosticTool.app.zip

Thanks for your help.

I want to reduce the size of a folder.  I have it sized to 75g and had it full at one point.  I have deleted data so now it has 45g in the folder.  It still is taking up the full 75g on my hard drive.  There is not enough space on my HD to copy all to a folder that is not encrypted  and then copy back to a new folder. I have re-sized folders to make them larger.  I have tried to re-size this folder to 50g.  Info tells me there is 45g in the folder but it will not allow the re-size.  Any help is greatly appreciated

Hi Clemsin,

First, make sure that the folders were unlocked when you empty the trash. It won't be emptied if the folders were locked.

You can compact the folder more by doing it via the command line as explained by Greg's "PS" comment in this post:
   viewtopic.php?f=6&t=171&p=417&hilit=compact#p418

We're working on making it more easier or more intrusive to use in a future update to Espionage but I do not have a timeframe on this.

I hope that that helps.

Hello - thanks for your comprehensive reply:

1) yes i did follow the instructions provided

2) then i understand what happened. I rebooted the MAc because i thought it was frozen as the process was never ending

3) The folder I wanted to backup on the external drive is 830MB. After about 3h i killed the process. is it supposed to take that long? I then changed the location of the backup folder to the main, fixed internal drive, and in only took a few minutes (please note that the folder was ALREADY encrypted). is it normal to have such a difference? The external drive is connected to Time Capsule which is connected to my Mac through Ethernet cable, not Wifi

Thanks again

Hi Max,

The backup process backs up the encrypted folder at once, it doesn't encrypt it again and you're right, it shouldn't slow down the speed of it. The backup uses the rsync protocol to backup to your external drive. I'm not sure why it is taking a while. How are you backing up to the Time Capsule? Did you tell Espionage to backup to a specific folder on the external drive and then tell Espionage to back it up via the menu bar app?

There are some known performance issues with drives attached to Time Capsule. First, the USB port slows it down to the max of 20-30MBps speed, plus the overhead of Time Capsule and AFP protocol, knocking it down around ~10MBps. For 830MB, it should take around 2 minutes at most.

Hi - just got Espionage today, so apologies if these questions have already been answered. I have searched the forum and the software's in-built guide and help section without success.

Hi Max, no apologies needed. We don't have a specific template for Office because the complex data structure of how Office handle data is not easy to work with Espionage.  

1) I have Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac, hence i followed the procedure to add the data folder and the relevant applications to Espionage, unfortunately the encrypted image that Espionage created only contained 4 sub-folders out of the 15 that the original 9in the trash now) had. As a consequence when i opened Outlook i had lost my identity and emails and folders, contacts etc

I'm sorry about what happened. Espionage should've had all 9 folders that it moved to Trash copied into the encrypted folder. I'm not sure what happened here. Can you tell us which folder you encrypted and did you follow the instruction laid out here:   
   http://www.taoeffect.com/blog/2011/01/e ... -released/

2) I have then renamed the encrypted folder 'Microsoft office data old", thinking that i would have simply moved back from trash the original one. thankfully i didn't, and simply used the restore function built into Espionage (ie i have simply clicked the 'minus' symbol) - the program has been busy 'restoring' ever since. that was 1h ago. Is it supposed to take this long?

Depending on the size of the folder and the speed of your computer, it can take a few hours to restore the folder. I don't recommend forcing to kill it unless it has been really long like a day or two. Forcing to kill it can damage the files and the damage would be irreversible. This is why we place a copy of all of your files first in the Trash, just in case the process goes badly (happens very rarely).

Restoring the folder wouldn't bring the missing files back because Espionage will move the current files within the encrypted folder to a regular folder before removing the encrypted folder. Which is what you saw in your second post in this thread.

3) on a related note, i never managed to back-up all of the files i had encrypted through espionage (not that many, a few gigabytes worth of) because it was taking for ever and after a few hours i gave up and rebooted. Is it supposed to take that long? I was trying to back-up to an external G-Tech drive connected to Time Capsule; I had disabled Time Machine for the encrypted folders

Yes, it is normal for it to take a long time, even if it is a couple of gigabytes. The nature of encryption itself makes it complex to sync and to back up the data efficiently. Time Machine can back up the difference between the previous backups and the current data but the encryption makes this nearly impossible because the pattern in the encrypted folder are pseudo-random. I say nearly because the sparsebundle format allows for it to be synced/backed up via 8MB slices of data at a time. You still need the entire folder to be backed up at once to make a complete backup set.

In other words, Time Machine can back up 20-30kb worth of changes and you'll have a complete backup by merging the previous backup and the current changes. Espionage can only backup the entire 2GB folder for a 2GB encrypted folder.

4) Finally, could someone please explain to me the difference between removing a folder altogether and un-checking the  'Enabled'? box? Before removing the folder altogether to fix my problem at 2), i tried un-checking the Enabled box but it did not seem to have any effect. When I launched Outlook it was still looking for the encrypted folder (with missing sub-folders) rather than the 'old' unencrypted one.

The enable checkbox is for the password prompt or basically for any changes to occur. As long as it is enabled, you'll  get the password prompt to access this folder and apps can work with it after you enter the password. When it is disabled, the apps will not be able to access the content of this folder and you will not get a prompt.

In your case, Outlook was trying to locate the folder but the only time Outlook can see the data is when you unlock the folder and that can only happen when you enter the password to unlock the folder. Which means it has to be enabled first and unlocked. Did you ever get prompted for the password when you open Outlook?

The removal of the folder from Espionage is for removing the encryption and restoring it back to the original folder.

How can i make sure that this does not happen again and actually protect my email files?

It is hard to say what happened in this case, we'd need to know what exactly happened here. It should work correctly by following the instruction in this guide:
    http://www.taoeffect.com/blog/2011/01/e ... -released/

I hope this helps in some ways. Please let me know if you have more questions or need further help.

Hi Grosso,

You're absolutely welcome. I'm glad we were able to help you in this case.

Thank you so much Mike I really appreciate your help
I downloaded it, it's done. Waiting to hear from you.

Hi Grosso,
 
You're welcome. I got your report, you should receive an email from me now. Let me know how it turns out.

Hi,

Can you run our diagnostic tool and upload the report to us. We'll get the report over email and we'll get back to you there.

Thanks!