Address book corrupted - Bye Bye Espionage

Started by kpowick, September 09, 2010, 09:05:51 AM

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kpowick

I have been evaluating Espionage (2.8.5) for a couple of days.  The product really looked promising to me, until it corrupted my Address Book.  :x  

I used an application template to encrypt the address book.  During this process an Alert was displayed that the backup of SyncServices had failed and should be re-run.  So, I did this via the Global Status menu's Backup Now option.

All seemed well.  Address Book and associated applications (mail, Safari, etc) were working fine -- Until I logged out and then back in.  Upon login and after being asked for the auto-unlock password, I received an Alert - Will not delete folder 'AddressBook' because it is not empty!  Renamed to 'AddressBook-saved'.  I opened my Address book to find that all entries (hundreds) were gone.  :shock:

Both the folders ../AddressBook and ../AddressBook-saved found in ../Library/Application Support appeared to have problems.  AddressBook itself didn't work and the -saved version was clearly missing some files.

Fortunately, I hand not yet emptied my Trash, which had the original AddressBook folder placed there by the initial encryption attempt.  I renamed the corrupt AddressBook folder and then manually dragged/dropped the original from the Trash back to ../Library/Application Support.  All was well again.  :D

Unfortunately, this has tainted my experience with Espionage.  There is just no way that I can trust an application that can potentially corrupt vast amounts of sensitive data.  In the above described case, I was saved by still having the original folder in the Trash.  Perhaps it would have been recoverable from the ../EspionageBackups folder as well, I don't know.  However, the point is that it shouldn't have been corrupted in the first place.

Maybe I'll give Espionage another go at some later revision, but for now, I'll have to remove it from my system.  One scare was just one too many.

--
KP

greg

#1
Hi KP,

Sorry to hear of the trouble, we'll do our best to assist.

Espionage actually plays very safely with your data, it never deletes anything, and it uses the tried and true disk images under-the-hood to store your encrypted data.

It's possible, however, for certain kinds of conflicts to occur when encrypting certain application data (most apps work without problems). For example, I've had my AddressBook folder encrypted for several months now (in addition to Mail, and others), and haven't encountered the issue you're describing. However, it is certainly possible, I do not doubt it.

Even in this situation, however, it's highly unlikely that your AddressBook data was ever in any real jeopardy. If you change your mind and decide to give it another shot, here's what I recommend:

  • As we recommend, always have Espionage backup your data, and preferably, use another backup solution like Time Machine as well.
  • If this problem repeats itself, download and run this diagnostic tool, and then try restarting your computer and launching AddressBook again.
  • If the issue persists, contact us and let us know (and let us know that you ran the diagnostic tool so we know where the report came from).

It just so happens that AddressBook is one of the folders that's more likely to run into this type of issue because its data is synced and accessed by so many other apps, but for most apps there should be no problems whatsoever.

Kind regards,
Greg, Tao Effect
Follow @espionageapp@twitter.com or @espionage@mstdn.io for news and updates!

kpowick

#2
Hi Greg,

Thank you for the detailed reply.  I will keep the points you made in mind if I decide to re-evaluate Espionage.

As I mentioned, it really looked promising, but having data corrupted so early in the evaluation process, using a core feature of the product, is/was of great concern.

Regards,
KP