Disabling Writing to USB Storage Devices to Combat Data Theft

In my previous post, I’ve talked about disabling your USB ports to prevent data theft when you are not around. By disabling the USB ports, any USB storage media like USB pen drive and external hard drive will not be detected by Windows but still allowing your USB mouse and keyboard to function.

Other than disabling USB ports, you can try another method which is disabling the write access to USB storage devices. By doing this, you make the USB storage devices read-only. You can read the file from the USB drive but you can’t copy any files into it. There are two ways to disable the write access. One is by implementing the registry hack manually and second is by using a software. Using a software is easier and less tedious than searching through the registry area.

ThumbScrew : USB Write Blocker

Thumbscrew is a freeware Windows application that allows you to quickly enable or disable writing to all USB storage devices. This light weight tool stay in your system tray and have two icons to indicate whether or one USB storage devices are set to be read only :

Disable Write Access to USB Storage Devices

Here is the Windows error message upon copy attempt:

Disable Write Access to USB Storage Devices

Download ThumbScrew Now | 233KB

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This entry was posted on Friday, May 16th, 2008 and is filed under Freeware, Tips and Tricks, Windows. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

11 Responses to “Disabling Writing to USB Storage Devices to Combat Data Theft”

Aseem Kishore
May 16th, 2008 at 10:05 am
Wow, I had never even heard of this before! That’s sweet man! Thanks for the info!
Madhur Kapoor
May 18th, 2008 at 2:12 am
This will really come in handy
Rate this:
2.9
hanep
May 19th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
comes handy to me. hey, i want to post this at my blog. will give credits to you. thanks!!!!
Rate this:
2.9
Steve Yu
May 20th, 2008 at 11:23 am
Aseem Kishore , Madhur Kapoor > Glad both of you found this useful.

Hanep > A link love is cool. Thanks.
Rate this:
2.5
abhishek
May 23rd, 2008 at 7:53 pm
i would also like to mention about this utility…will give u a a link back…i hope u don’t have any problem on that if yes then let me know.
Rate this:
2.9
Steve Yu
May 23rd, 2008 at 9:53 pm
abhishek > go ahead, I have no problem with that.
Rate this:
2.5
Deyaa Addeen Fahmy Shedeed
June 2nd, 2008 at 9:15 pm
Appreciate your efforts.
thank you very much.
Rate this:
2.5