Phrozen Safe USB 1.0

Phrozen Safe USB 1.0 is a tool to help you disable the use of USB devices on your PC, so protecting you from malware or individuals who might want to copy confidential files to a USB key.

To get started, install the program, reboot your PC and launch Phrozen Safe USB. The program will then leave an icon in your system tray before running quietly in the background (it consumed under 3MB RAM on our test PC).

By default your USB devices will remain as normal. Click the icon, though, and set "USB Status" to "USB Devices in Read Only Mode" and any drives you plug in subsequently will be read-only: you'll be able to view and launch whatever files they contain, but not copy any from your PC to the key, so offering some protection from data theft.

If you change the setting to "USB Devices deactivated" then your system will no longer recognise USB storage devices. Plug them in and you won't be able to view or access them in Explorer.

And if you want to return to normal, set Phrozen Safe USB to "USB Devices fully operational". You'll then be able to see and access USB storage devices just as before.

There is one small hassle here in that changes won't necessarily happen immediately. We turned USB off on our 64-bit Windows 7 PC, for instance, and the key we'd already connected remained perfectly usable. Only when we disconnected and reconnected the key did anything change.

Otherwise, though, Phrozen Safe USB offers a lightweight and simple way to control USB use on your PC: give it a try.

A small and simple tool which offers some convenient ways to restrict USB usage on your PC