WinMend Folder Hidden - anyone using it?

As the subject indicates I would like to know if anyone has experience with the program WinMend Folder Hidden. I have installed it and it seems to be pretty straight forward and to perform as advertised. CNET gave it pretty decent marks as did a few other reviewers but I thought I would ask the good folks here for some input.

I am not looking for absolute security just some privacy when I lend an external drive to a friend or just plug an an external drive unto a friends PC. Files are not especially sensitive, just personal.

http://www.winmend.com/folder-hidden/

 

Added it to my list more than a month ago, but didn't personally try it.

 

@ bgoodman4

Hi, nice find

Could have gone in here i suppose - https://www.wilderssecurity.com/forumdisplay.php?f=40 -

Tried it offline on XP/SP2 using a drive with FAT32 clusters

Enabled ShadowDefender & launched it & got several of these



It attempted to, phone home i presume, as my modem panel launched & asked for permission to dial out. No go as i was offline I'm not saying anything dodgy was happenning, as new installs do sometimes do this. As soon as i cancelled that the cmd.exe prompts stopped & i got this.



Proceeded to install very quickly & i pasted a PDF in a new folder WM Hide which i put inside another new folder Test WM. As well as hiding folders you can also hide files so i selected to hide the PDF & the WM Hide folder it was in.



As you can see, or not both have disappeared & the Test WM folder shows Zero bytes



I then used FoldAlyzer to view Test WM



Next

 

And then with the folder WM Hide Unhidden



Also used Directory Snoop



Which shows traces of the WM Hide folder, which "appear" to be deleted, but NO PDF listing !

I launched/closed the App numerous times & hid/unhid the folder to test, & each time i got the "phone home" alerts ?

I doubt whether it will fool a full forensic etc analysis, but it appears to more than satisfy being able to hide files/folders from, More than just casual snoopers From what i've seen so far, i would say it's worth having. And i expect you could use encryption on the files etc you place in the folder's before hiding =

Maybe others could use some more tools against it, like Undelete etc Apps, & post back with their findings

 

Had another play, this time online, & used Universal Extractor to make a non install version to see if it would work, it did

Allowed this



Got 2 of these ActiveX prompts ? which i denied



Then this



Nothing wierd seemed to happen and IE didn't launch. Closed the App & reopened it. This time i allowed the ActiveX prompts with the same result. Not sure why it's wanting to use ActiveX ?

Decided to upload it for scanning, should have before really but as i was/am in SD mode i'm not worried.

Jotti results.

Filename: WinMend-Folder-Hidden-1.4.3.exe ( Setup )

MD5: bb64f2fe3d15dade9d935624fc27e46b
SHA1: 5f13bedbcec54f6b58192d56e46f0872e280d9b8

Status: Scan finished. 0 out of 20 scanners reported malware.

Filename: FolderHidden.exe ( Non installed version App )

MD5: 3bc2d1663e923f241174c5e7b4d54a02
SHA1: 9caf1c3134b9f90c7df5de8a1fff2d211595a79f

Status: Scan finished. 0 out of 20 scanners reported malware.

Also got, Result: 0 /40 (0.0%) on both from VT using MD5 hashes

Did a google search for "WinMend Folder Hidden" and found this for a previous version



Don't know if it was a FP at the time ? & i didn't see any other negative etc listings, so ? If you know more, please add

 

Thanks for the investigations and replies, much appreciated.

 

I have used WinMend Folder Hidden in the past and it worked really good for awhile, then one day I went to open my hidden folder to find out that all of my files had been deleted.

I was really mad, so I waited until a new version came out and try it again and the same thing happened, it deleted all of my files just one empty folder.

It appears to have some kind of bug when it encrypts your files, it sometimes deletes them.

So I switch to Secure Folder, another freeware which I have been using for about a year now with no problems.

Thanks.

 

Never seen that before, and also has a portable version.

 

I asked PrevxHelp to examine WinMend files for dodgyness, which he kindly did

@ littlebits

Thanks for the extra info I watched it with ProcessExplorer using CRYPTO, and realised it was using that as well as hiding. If was reliable it would be fine, but as it is

 

I remember WinMend. Have used it last year. Will never forget what happened to me while using it. I was happy with it until I restored an image backup from a logical drive to a Windows 7 partition in a dual boot scenario. The files are there but entering the password does not open it. It was greyed out. System imaging was ATI Home 11.

Now thinking that it may be that it was Windows 7 problem, I installed a backup hdd and restored it there. Same thing. The files are there but they are greyed out and I cannot open it anymore. It was a good thing that I have some backup of the files in DVD(but not the whole content so I lost an important folder/files there).

I deleted the error message and the image shots as it was a horrible experience(apart from being last year issue) but IF there are experiences like this one I had please guys share it here so the OP will know what to safe guard and be alert about. Especialy the suggestions on another hide folder app.

I suggest that when you make an image backup of your drive with WinMend or any hide folder app you unhide all of it first or remove it from that app's protection. Afterwards when you recover via that system image you place them manually again in that app.

That was my thinking all the while but I forgot to do that and went on the ATI scheduling.

Now because of it I am jittery of using another hide folder app. I used FreeHideFolder prior WinMend. The same experience lost files because password will not work after an image restore. Actually this was the first hide folder app I used. It also was detected as malware by Avira/Hitmanpro.

There are other's that have been suggested here. There was an app that "softtouch" developed but that was deleted to when I had problems with WinMend. There was thread topic here which contained a lot of helpfull tips but as to my experience with system imaging I believe it was not tackled there.

Actually the hide folder app that I never had any problem was TrueCrypt. Even when I forgot to remove the contents again in TrueCrypt hidden folder during system image backup the restore was okay. One thing I do not like is support. The forums there require an email address that is not web based.

Some questions on the suggested apps (e.g Secure Folder and the like):

1) Have you encountered any error related to not accessing hidden folders after a:
a) system restore b) system image backup restore

2) Use of partitioning software on the drive that you have the hide folder app. Have you any errors accessing the hidden folders after adding/re-sizing a partition which the app is contained.

3) Scenarios in which you have had problems accessing the hidden folder placed inside the apps container.

Additional:

Found th thread topic I mentioned it is HERE