Disable Files, Folders and Text from Being Copied or Moved in Windows

Been using the computer for many years but I couldn’t find a way to prevent a file or folder from being copied or moved. Of course we could encrypt the file which anyone could copy but virtually unable to open it because cracking an encrypted file is not as easy as point and click. If you search in Google, most of the time you’ll find tools that disable USB flash drives so that people can’t steal your data. What if I want the file to be accessible to everyone but not allowing them to copy and paste the file, folder or even the text?

Here’s a pretty amazing software that I found which is able to provide an anti-copy feature on your computer to protect your file or folder from being copied or moved. The best part is this tool is free.

M File Anti-Copy helps you lock the copy of your files. All you need to do is to enter a password after installation, and you can protect your files and folders by clicking the Activate button. Once anti-copy has been activated, you will find that the copy and paste command no longer working! Even when a text or document file is opened and someone wants to copy the content and paste it somewhere, that won’t work either.

If you want to copy or move a file when the anti-copy feature is active, there is a built-in File Copier and File Move function for you to do that so that you don’t need to deactivate the protection first.

I noticed that Windows Task Manager was disabled when the anti-copy is active. Not only that, even the built-in Windows Registry Editor (regedit) is disabled too! At the program’s Option, I found that it can also disable Folder Options, Search and Run. I suspect that M File Anti-Copy implements these restriction to protect the program from being terminated. Since I couldn’t run Windows Task Manager, I used a third party task manager software called Process Explorer.

I found out that when File Anti-Copy has been activated, a new process svchost.exe will run. Although there are probably a few svchost.exe files running in a Windows computer, but this one is pretty easy to identify because it has an red colored X icon. Terminating M File Anti-Copy svchost.exe will allow you copy and move files/folders. Same thing, when you enable File Anti-Delete to protect your files from being deleted or renamed, it will run a new process called System.exe. Again, the exact name of this process already exist in Windows but it also has a red colored icon. Terminating system.exe will allow you to rename and delete a file even if the protection is active.

Another possible way to bypass the protection is to upload the file or email it to yourself if the computer has Internet connection. On LAN, you can also share the folder where the file is located and use another computer to connect to the shared folder and copy. As you can see, M File Anti-Copy is not perfect but it does provide some level of protection against people who didn’t know about this tool.

[ Download M File Anti-Copy ]