MP3 Sponge

Security options for a computer evolved and got refined over the years. An antivirus solution is merely just a method of shielding your PC from malicious content, but threats can come in different forms. For instance, MP3 Sponge is an application you can use to hide valuable text info inside songs.

One of the application’s main advantages is that you don’t have to go through a setup process to make it work, and it’s good to go from the moment it reaches your computer. As such, you can carry it with you on a thumb drive to be able to encrypt and decrypt text regardless of the computer you’re using, without affecting stability.

Just as the name might suggest, a core resource file is required under the MP3 format. The other requirement is the text you want to hide from others. However, you need to manually paste it in the dedicated field, because there’s no built-in function to make the application read text documents, at least of plain format.

Note that it can take a bit of time for encryption to be done, but progress info updates in real time and shown in percentage to help out. A password is also required to be able to encrypt the message, and be sure to remember it to extract content later on.

The original MP3 file is not altered, and a new one is created instead. The audio layer is not affected and remains the same, so you can enjoy the song even if there’s an encrypted message. However, the name of the file must not be changed for decryption to be possible, because it acts as the encryption key.

Decoding starts as soon as you select the encrypted MP3 file and provide the appropriate password. The process is done a bit faster than encoding, and result is displayed in the text area. Export is also done through manual copy of content.

Bottom line that even communication over the web has its risks, so MP3 Sponge is a practical application you can use to transfer messages with minimum chances it gets leaked. Encryption can be rather slow, especially when processing large MP3 files, but the overall result is worth the effort.