Hide text files in your photos

Steganography is a technology used to hide text documents in photos. To the human eye, the photo appears as a simple image but, in fact, the snapshot may be giving new meaning to the old saw that a picture is worth a thousand words.

If you're intrigued with the idea of burying secret text in your photos, a program released this week, QuickCrypto, may be worth trying.

The Windows software is a general purpose encryption application, but in includes among its many features a steganography function. The function allows you to hide plain text or encrypted files in photos. Those files can only be viewed by someone with a copy of QuickCrypto and knowledge of a password needed to unlock them.

One agreeable feature of QuickCrypto is it permits you to encrypt individual files on your hard disk. Some programs allow that to be done only to entire folders.

The software also has a password vault where passwords can be encrypted and hidden from prying hackers and a password generator for creating hard-to-break passwords.

Other features include a file shredding utility that meets U.S. Department of Defense standards and support of AES and Blowfish encryption methods.

QuickCrypto Professional costs $39.95. There's also a home edition offered at $14.95. A 15-day free trial version is available for download from the software writer's Web site.