security programs U can recommend for the i700 (for the slightly paranoid)

[gizzzum]

are there any security programs u can recommend for the i700 that ideally will hide documents and photos etc (maybe like stegnographic) and password protect them.

or maybe there is a ms pocket word encryption program like the one built into ms word were u can give the document a password to open and/or edit. if so i assume u could "bury" (drag&drop) a pic or a doc into the word doc u want to protect there by accomplishing the same thing more or less.

conversely are ther any programs in this category on the mkt (pocket gear/handango) that i should avoid?

[PROlenick]

If you're familiar with PGP, you know it's what you want. I've been using it on my desktop machines for email and local encryption for years. It goes back to the days of DOS, but has been prettied up for Windows and the Mac. It's the gold standard of encryption - the US gov't. initially prosecuted its author, Phil Zimmerman, as a spy because it considered strong encryption to be an illegal weapon of war, but it then backed off and dropped the charges.

PGP is in widespread worldwide use and popularized "public key" encryption (an idea independently arrived at by two different groups of mathematicians): You publish a key to be used to send messages to you that only you can open, by decrypting them with your private key, the use of which you can protect with a passphrase. Your private key can be also used to digitally "sign" a message, as your public key can then be used to authenticate it as really coming from you. You can even sign a message with your private key and then encrypt the result to your correspondent's public key. PGP would then automatically open the message for them and validate it as coming from you.

There are online repositories for public keys or you and your correspondent can simply have PGP make ASCII files of your public keys which you would then email to each other. You each tell PGP to import the other person's key, and you've got a secure channel set up.

PGP can also encrypt messages locally on your machine that you're not sending to anyone else. (The desktop version can even create encrypted virtual drives, where anything saved to that drive letter is automatically encrypted. You mount that drive with your passphrase, and it is then available to read or write to transparently.)

Desktop PGP has plug-ins for Outlook and Eudora, and can also encrypt anything on your clipboard or saved as a file. The PPC version grabs text from any text editor (like Inbox or Word) to encrypt or decrypt it, and can process any file on your PPC, including binaries like photos.

I've been wanting to have PGP on my PPC for a long time, and it's now available. I got it yesterday. It works fine on my Samsung i700. It costs about $50, or $70 bundled with the desktop version. Go to pgp.com or philzimmerman.com (he sold the company but is a reseller and gets a few bucks that way - PGP.com handles delivery and support either way and it costs the same at either site). The version you want is labeled by them as being for Windows CE, which is the original name for the Pocket PC operating system.

[PPCMD]

I would suggest PDA Defense Pro, it was very solid on my old Palms and works very well on my PPC. Caution though it does have a bomb feature so if you forget your password it will wipe it all out. Perfect for the paranoid.