Exchanging 'secret' messages, photos, movies and more using base64

Encoded a mp4 using OEDcoder

For work

Sometimes you may want to make your messages less obvious to be reviewed by others.  Exchanging images or 'not so friendly' messages can have deadly consequences.  They may accidentally show up on your screen or preview at the most inconvenience time such as someone is watching over your shoulder or when you are projecting your screen during meetings.   I always remember to turn on 'do not disturb' during meetings but email previews still get me from time to time when I need to dig through emails.  It is common for us exchanging emails and images with base64 encoding to prevent s* from happening.  It is not a password protected attachment but rather displaying a meaningless text string in preview without catching attention and discouraging any nosy people.  Would it be too obvious to know they are 'secret' messages?  Yes and No depends on your role.  My role is expected to send large files with base64 segments or receive base64 encoded emails/messages for production support.   

At home

It comes in handy for personal use to send messages, photos, movies ... etc. as an encoded text which is unreadable initially hiding away from your nosy parents or others who cannot preview and react to them when they are nearby.  With this new encode/decode tool OEDcoder,  I can now exchange encoded messages and share media files with friends who just want to drag and drop and copy and paste onto an email or iMessage quickly without using command line or paying online encode/decoding services.   

Example:  Exchange a 25mb video file (mp4) via a email client having a 5mb file size limit

1.  Encode the 25mb mp4 using OEDcoder

2.  Break the encoded text file from step above (1.) into 5mb each text file (i.e. 5 text files total and name them accordingly such as 1-5 or however you and your recipient would like to organize)

3.  Send individual text files via email which now meets your email client attachment size limit (you may set a password for each attachment to enhance security)

4.  Recipient concatenates all text files into a text file then runs OEDcoder to decode

5.  File is now restored as a viewable mp4 by the recipient

Tips to enhance file security:

1.  Double encode (i.e. encode the encoded text file twice)
2.  Do not send them in sequence and provide sequence mapping to your recipient via message or from a separate email
3.  Set password for individual text files
4.  Remove some text string from the text file (leading, trailing ... etc.) and put them on a separate email or via message(s)
5.  Send individual files to different email accounts to be restored by the recipient

Read my other post if you want to learn more about the performance of this lightweight offline tool "OEDcoder" and why I recommend it.     

Here is a related post about 'How to send unsupported file type attachments or oversize files via email using base64"