(formerly known as PalmLock)
© by Daniel Seifert, 2000
http://www.dseifert.de/EasyLock
10/22/2000
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?
EasyLock is a security program as well, but approaches it's 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.
Although there are no known cases where the use of EasyLock 2.x has lead to any
damage (or loss of data or whatever), 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.
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 haven┤t done so, yet).
EasyLock does currently not work together with GlowHack. Both hacks are patching the same, time-critical PalmOS routine. EasyLock 2.2 has been modified to do only the most crucial tasks in this routine (in fact only 3 lines of code), but it still does not work, so it's either not possible at all or GlowHack's author should start modifying his hack, too.
PalmVHack and EasyLock are not working very well together when an alarm is displayed. The task of PalmVHack is to disable the hardware keys, while EasyLock relies on them for login. A fix could be to not disable the login button in PalmVHack.
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.
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, that┤s 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.
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 I┤d 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 (DEM 10). The registration code is valid for all future versions of EasyLock, too.
Currently there is no registration possibility. EasyLock 2.2 has a trial
period until Mid-January 2001. At this time I will have set up everything
at PalmGear so that you can register online using your credit card. Please
visit my homepage in January for more details or subscribe to the
Announcement-Mailinglist.
A week before EasyLock expires, a short message will pop up informing
you that you have only one week left.
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