AgileBits’ KnoX Sucks, Don’t Buy It

A while ago I heard about Know from AgileBits and it seemed to be a good idea where I could encrypt a directory so that it could only be mounted by Knox and one could read it only through Knox. This meant that I could place my sensitive data into that directory and nobody could read them w/o having the password. Because Knox is made by the same company (AgileBits) than 1Password I naturally expected that I could place the password for Knox inside 1Password and I would only need my 1Password master password to open it. Unfortunately AgileBits was unable just to do that. So I paid $35 bucks for nothing. The only place where it would be useful is when I have a directory with sensitive data that is use rarely. If I need to remember the password in order to automatically open the encrypted folder on startup then the idea of Knox is gone.

Now with the Full Disk Encryption of Mac OS X Lion any incentive for AgileBits is gone too making the App obsolete in most cases. The only place where I would to have it is for the rarely used but highly sensitive data like credit reports etc. That said it might be a better solution to use an additional disk (external or internal) and use Full Disk Encryption on it. This way the encryption is tightly integrated into Mac OS X Lion with no fuss. Therefore Knox because the first casualty migrating to Lion. Too bad – too sad. If it weren’t for 1Password I would never use or buy any application from AgileBits.

– Andy