Encoding Decoding Free

CNET Editors' review

by: CNET staff on November 11, 2011

There are plenty of encryption tools out there that let users encrypt files and protect them with passwords for enhanced security. Encoding Decoding Free is a simple program that lets users easily encrypt and decode files. It's definitely not the most sophisticated program we've ever seen, but it seems to work fairly well if your needs are simple.

The program's interface is basic and fairly easy to figure out. Users can either manually select the file they want to encrypt from within the program, or simply drag and drop the file onto the large padlock image on the program's interface. Next, the program prompted us to select a password; it evaluated the strength of the password as low, medium, or high as we typed. Once that was done, the program took a few seconds to encrypt or file and save it in the original source folder. Decrypting the file was a matter of simply repeating the steps: selecting the file, entering the password, and giving the program a few seconds to do its thing. Encoding Decoding Free doesn't have much in the way of documentation, and it gave us at least one alert message that was in a foreign language. We'd also like to know some specifics about the type of encryption that the program uses. We're not sure we'd recommend Encoding Decoding Free to protect government secrets, but for the average home user, it's probably an adequate choice.

Encoding Decoding Free installs and uninstalls without issues.