14 DAY TRIAL // Everybody values privacy and, naturally, that privacy extends to the use of our computers. Whether you work with 'sensitive' information, share a computer or simply subscribe to a healthy dose of paranoia, Ghost Sphere is a program that will allow hide your information from prying eyes.
What does it do? Ghost Sphere allows you to hide any folder on your hard drive to keep it safe from prying eyes. Many of the intrusions in our personal space stem from curiosity. Folders like "Documents" and "Pictures" are a natural magnet for curious people... let's face it, when left alone with someone else's computer, few of us can claim to not have been tempted to pry and poke around. "Out of sight is out of mind" the saying goes and that is exactly what Ghost Sphere helps you achieve.
Ghost Sphere provides a very simple and efficient way of hiding your folders. There is nothing to worry about, your information will still be there and there is no way to accidentally "lock your car keys inside the car". Folders will be hidden, not only in the Finder but also in Spotlight indexes and any other search tools you might have installed. For the vast majority of users those folders will be totally unaccessible.
Although Ghost Sphere was designed to hide Folders from prying eyes, it can be just as useful to people who want to keep information safe from deletion or accidental modification. This can be invaluable when you have little children working on the computer or people who are just learning how to use it and are prone to accidents.
Not a security solution, but as secure as it can get The program is not a security tool, and it in no way protects against serious malicious attempts at compromising your computer's security. It does keep your folders hidden and does make a serious attempt at keeping them hidden. It uses a 448bit military strong encryption which means that your password, the names and paths of your hidden folders remain permanently encrypted and safe from any but the most persistent hackers.
The program even disguises itself from the other users. The 'Startup Protection', when enabled, greets the unadvised user with a progress bar, stating: "Scanning for dangerous Ghost Files..." and "No dangerous Ghost Files Found! Your system is clean and safe!" when the progress bar fills up. This helps to further protect your files by concealing the purpose of the application. In order to use the program like you normally do, you have to keep a modifier key pressed during program start up. This serves to further conceal you hidden folders by not diving away the real use of the program which would get people thinking.
Near automation, I like Making folders visible every time you need to work in them and invisible every time you are done working with them can be tedious. Furthermore, there is the risk that you accidentally forget to hide a folder. To avoid all this hassle, Ghost Sphere has the option to handle certain folders automatically. This means that whenever you launch the program, all handled folders become visible, and, as soon as you close the application, they go back to their hidden state. Managed folders are great when Ghost Sphere is in the login items, and is automatically started since after authentication you can just hide and forget about it. When you are finished working and log out, restart or shutdown Ghost Sphere is closed by the system and all those folders become hidden once again.
Using Ghost Sphere is straightforward enough, the main window is split into two halves, in the left one is your list of folders, with a tick box next to each for auto handling, in the right side you can see some information about the currently selected folder and have the option to turn on startup protection. Making a folder visible or invisible is as simple as toggling the little switch below the folder list. There are no preferences or other settings and everything is pretty much inside the main window, it's intuitive and easy to use.
The Good A very simple and easy to use solution for hiding certain folders. The startup protection and automatic folder handling are just great, and the entire program is very intuitive and easy to use.
The Bad If you have the habit of upgrading or reinstalling the system often, you might not enjoy the method that the developers use for registration. If your hardware configuration changes or you reinstall the system, you have to "re-activate", which is something you can't do whenever you need it. The documentation mentions e-mailing them and they "will increment your allowed activations by one to grant you an instant reactivation in future". Not only this, but if you decide to try out this program you will be faced with the most draconian shareware reminder idea that was ever dreamed up by the human mind.
The Truth This program offers a easy way to handle the visibility of your folders, with automation and ease of use. If you need a fast and intuitive way of making folders visible and invisible, this might be it.
Here are some screenshots of Ghost Sphere, click to enlarge:
