This is how you hide your secrets – in a picture

There are many ways to prevent people from accessing sensitive files. You can use simple easy-to-detect methods such as renaming the files or using sophisticated encryption programs. It all depends on how sensitive your secrets are and how important it is that no one can access them.

A fun method, if you want to feel a bit like a secret agent, is to hide files inside any images. You can view the images as usual and the only noticeable difference is that the files will be slightly larger. If you don’t hide too large files, no one will notice, and you can, for example, send the secrets by email if the intended recipient knows how to access the content.

Here’s how to explain your secrets to a picture

1. Zip up. Start by packing the files you want to hide into a zip file. You do this by selecting the desired files, right-click, select Send to and then Compressed map. In our example, the image file is called Bonfire.jpg. The secrets are two text files, Secret1.txt and Secret2.txtwhile the zip file is named Secret.zip. They are all in the folder Files.

2. Combine. Write come in Startbutton’s search field and click The command prompt. Go to your folder by typing cd /files. Of course you use your own folder name. Then type copy/b Brasa.jpg + Secret.zip Fire.jpg. Now you see the new file Eld.jpg. It’s still an image, but it now contains your secret zip file and you can delete the other files.

3. Change the ending. To access your secret, you must change the file extension. For it to work, you need to show file extensions in Explorer by selecting Folder Options in Toolmenu and switch to the tab Viewing. Remove the check mark at Hide filename extensions for known file types. Now you can change the file extension from jpg to zip.

4. Unpack. For some reason, Windows does not support this type of zip files, so you need a compression program, such as the free program 7-zip (download here). Then just open the image file that is now named Fire.zip with the program of your choice and you have instant access to your secret files.

Gradually