ZXI Encrypter

Sending a message over the information superhighway doesn’t mean it’s secure. Nearly any info that travels this way is stored somewhere, and you might not want it to be decoded. Luckily, various encryption methods have been developed over the years, and with ZXI Encrypter you can secure your messages with little effort.

One advantage for this type of application is that you don’t have to install it, and can carry it with you on a thumb drive to use on other computers as well. There’s no need to worry about affecting the health status of the target PC, because registries remain intact. However, you do need to check whether or not .NET Framework is on the PC you want to use it on.

Encryption only takes a little while, since all you have to do is select the text and trigger the process. Sadly, the application doesn’t work with any kind of file, so you need to rely on your clipboard to paste text inside the dedicated input field.

The application doesn’t tell you what algorithm it uses to encrypt. However, for the process to be successful, you need to write down a pass code from 1 to 9 so the algorithm can create a unique identifier for your text. At the press of a button, the second pane shows a random text string you also need to manually copy, because there’s no export option.

It all goes smooth until you need to figure out what’s behind an encrypted text string. The catch is that this application, as the name suggests, can only be used to encrypt text. If you want to reveal it again, you need to download ZXI Decrypter, and you need to remember the pass code. Unfortunately, anyone can take a shot at decrypting text, since there are less than ten available pass codes, and no limitations for multiple failed attempts.

All things considered, we come to the conclusion that ZXI Encrypter comes with good intentions, but as much as it tries, only gets half the job done. The first impression leaves a little more to be desired, with no other encryption methods to choose from, and quickly making you look for alternatives since it can’t reverse the process on its own.