Retain original file Date & Time by default

[Jim McCulloch]

file dates are important.

when i encrypted my files the file dates were changed to the encryption date and time.

I would like to see that Axcrypt retain the original file date and time when encrypting files and folders.

[SvanteSpectator]

Hello Jim,

Keeping the original file date and time is just simply wrong, and actually causes problems.

When you encrypt a file, it is transformed into something else. It’s not the same file. It should have the date and time of the transformation.

When you decrypt a file, it will have it’s date and time restored, since then the file is back to it’s original form and then it makes sense to restore the date and time as well the file name etc.

The problems caused include backup and synchronization software stopping to work. Many such softwares have “last time run” marker, and will only examine files that are newer. If we made encrypted files have the original un-encrypted file date and time, this strategy stops working. It has happened. There are other issues too.

Finally, we are encrypting files i.e. hiding information from view, and allow you to rename the encrypted file names as well. If we kept the original date and time, that would leak a little bit of information about the original file.

But, mostly, it’s just fundamentally wrong to transform a file and keep the original date and time of change. It’s changed. So its timestamp should change. If the information inside is unchanged (which it is in this case), that should be kept in meta data inside the file (which AxCrypt does).

[Jim T McCulloch]

lets take an example – test.txt

when encrypted the new file would change from test.txt to test.axx.

with the extension being different on the new file i dont see how it would create a problem.

At least i would know the last modified date of the file instead of the encryption date.

[Yvonne]

I am new to encrypting my files.  I encrypted ALL my files.  Now all my files are dated the date I encrypted.  I then took one folder and decrypted all files in it and the create date, modified date and last accessed date did not revert back to the original.   I need my files’ dates back.  these dates are VERY important.  How can this be done?

[SvanteSpectator]

Hello Yvonne,

When files are encrypted, they are indeed dated at the time of encryption – this is the correct semantics and breaking it causes many other problems.

When they are decrypted, they should indeed revert back to the original. Can you show that they do not with screen shots on a test file? It often helps us understand the full situation.

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