(formerly known as PalmLock)
© by Daniel Seifert, 2000-2001
http://www.dseifert.de/easylock
01/01/2001
Palm, Palm OS and HotSync are (registered) trademarks of Palm Inc.
Third-party product and brand names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of
their respective owner.
Dozens of security programs for the Palm compatible devices can be found. But why are so many users not using any of them? The reason is buried in the laziness of a Palm user. Who wants to enter a password all the time? Definitely not me.
EasyLock is a security program as well, but approaches its task from a slightly different angle. It isn't the goal to keep the Palm locked all the time, but rather to lock it as rarely as possible. When you turn on your Palm, EasyLock requires that you press a certain button (or two) within a certain period of time. If this does not happen, the Palm will be locked immediately. But even during the time the Palm waits for your login, EasyLock protects your Palm by disabling all pen taps on the touch screen.
So to protect your Palm by using EasyLock, you just have to press one additional button every time you turn your handheld device on. This is not much and you will soon get accustomed to it. A number of options allow you to customize EasyLock to fit your personal needs.
Although every care has been taken to make EasyLock as bug free and useful as possible, the author rejects any responsibility and cannot made liable for any damage, including loss of time, money or data, that result from the use (or non-usability) of EasyLock.
EasyLock is a "hack". And as with any other hack you should take care and
create a backup of your Palm data before using it - especially when it will
be working side-on-side with other hacks. Please read the section about
incompatibilities before using EasyLock the first time!
If you discover bugs or have problems, please be sure to read this manual and check my webpage. If this does not help, please get in contact with me.
EasyLock has been developed for PalmOS 3.x and is only working on this OS at 100%. Using it with OS 2.x is possible in a slightly limited way, too, by using "Don't require login at alarms".
EasyLock is a hack for Hackmaster, so you need it installed for EasyLock to work. Hackmaster is shareware, so please register. (You can also use EVPlugBase, but the registration screen is only available at Hackmaster as EVPlugBase is not 100% compatible with Hackmaster. I've reported this to the programmers of EVPlugBase, but they are ignoring me.)
Furthermore EasyLock requires that you have an assigned password (go to the application called 'Security' to choose a password, if you havenīt done so, yet).
Before enabling EasyLock you should
make sure that you really remember your set password. If EasyLock locks
your Palm and you don't remember your password, you will have to do
a hard reset (deleting all data), as there is no master password nor any
other way to get access to your Palm without knowing the correct password.
On Visor devices it is not a good idea to use "Don't require login at alarms" as this also implies that you don't need to login when you push a module in the slot. Rather prefer "Wait for login forever at alarms".
If you are using a keyboard that turns on the Palm automatically as soon as they are connected, this does happen by a "hotsync", so the corresponding EasyLock setting can be used to setup what should be done.
Please disable and delete old PalmLock versions before installing EasyLock.
When starting HackMaster, you will see EasyLock in the list of the installed hacks. To activate EasyLock, tap on the checkbox on the left side. On the right side you will see a "?" and a "+". Tapping on "?" will display the About-Text, tapping on "+" will bring you to the preference panel of EasyLock. A screenshot should be visible at the top of this page. For a description of the options see below. Make sure to read the manual of Hackmaster if you are not familiar with it!
Before deinstalling EasyLock, you MUST disable the hack in Hackmaster, otherwise your Palm will crash. You deinstall software by going to the launcher, choosing "Delete" from the menu and selecting the programs or databases that you want to have removed. If you want to get rid of the preferences of the hack deleted, too, rather use HackBroom (from PalmGear.com) to delete a hack completely.
Every time you switch your Palm on, you will have to press your login button within the range of time you specified (see below). If you do not do that, your Palm will get locked.
Well, thatīs it. Press the right key - use your Palm. Press the wrong key - get it locked.
I recommend to use the third selection.
By the way, a lock can only succeed when no alarm dialog is
displayed. So on unsuccessful logins the Palm can't be locked
immediately but you have to dismiss the alarm first. Therefore
EasyLock does try to lock the device every few seconds.
In these cases a double-lock might happen. The Palm does
remember the first (unsuccessful) attempt to lock the Palm and
locks it again, so you might have to enter your password twice
in these situations.
Please also consider that an alarm is always displayed, even
when you did not login successfully.
The recommended setting is "disabled".
If the message screen is enabled but you fail to login successfully,
the real screen contents is not restored but the lockout screen
overpaints the message screen. But in cases where the Palm cannot
lock immediately (like when displaying an alarm), EasyLock will
reset the screen contents after 5 seconds so you can dismiss the
dialog.
My thanks go to Markus Biewer for the idea of EasyLock and moral support, as well as beta testing.
Furthermore Iīd like to thank all the persons at the beta mailing list who contributed suggestions and beta-testing. Without them, EasyLock would not be as stable as it currently is. Thanks!
EasyLock is shareware and the registration fee is US$ 5. The registration code is valid for all future versions of EasyLock, too.
An unregistered copy of EasyLock is running for 14 days. Afterwards you have to register EasyLock to prevent it to stop working (your Palm won't be locked when the trial period expired!)
You can register online using your credit card at www.palmgear.com (starting January 3, 2001).
There are special prices and services available for firms. If you are interested, please contact me.
I have set up two mailing lists. Feel free to join any of them by sending an empty mail to the subscribe address. Please note that these are read-only mailing lists, e.g. writing to the lists won't work.
If you want to get in contact with me, feel free to send a mail to EasyLock@dseifert.de.
When you mail me a bug report or have a question, please consider the following points:
© Daniel Seifert, 2000-2001