Sharing confidential documents within a business or between businesses can be risky—you never know who might leak a document or if your document is being shared with other employees. To solve this problem, startup Confidela has launched the beta of WatchDox, a SaaS product that allows a sender to control, restrict and track viewing, printing and forwarding of documents. We have 100 free beta invites here.
The service’s basic functionality is similar to document sharing services like Scribd and DocStoc but with ramped up privacy settings and tracking systems. DocStoc and Scribd also offer the ability to set documents as private, but WatchDox is giving users a few more tools that allow users to control and track documents.
Watchdox lets you upload any type of document, including PowerPoint presentations, PDFs, Excel files and Word documents. The service gives you a dashboard where you can control who the document is sent to, limit a recipient’s ability to view, forward or print the document and encrypt content of a document. Users can set expiration dates for each document and place watermarks on the document to show versions or the document’s recipient. Watchdox will also track recipient’s activities and location, including when a document is opened and the user’s geographic IP address. You can also send documents directly from Microsoft Outlook by via a WatchDox Outlook plug-in.
WatchDox, which is initially partnering with file collaboration and storage service Box.net to make the service available to all Box.net users, is currently in beta and adding features regularly. The startup will offer a free version of the service and will soon launch a premium version, which is $14.99 per month. Negonation also lets you upload and manage private contracts online, but is targeted towards the legal community. WatchDox seems like a useful service for documents that are confidential and private but you do lose the sharing and social elements of Scribd and DocStoc, which let users share documents with anyone and form groups around certain subjects.
The problem with services like this is it all gets defeated in an instant with screen capturing software, or even a simple print screen.
We do have basic screen capture prevention. However, in today’s world with the iPhone and Blackberry that have built-in cameras and are email-enabled you are two clicks away from taking a photo of the screen and emailing it to the world. Having said that, we have a solution even for that…
Try our Spotlight feature: http://www.watc...x.com/spotlight
You can read more about our approach on our FAQ at: https://www.watchdox.com/FAQ (second Q from the bottom).
- Moti
As much as that is cool, It is easy to counter it, I will simply run a screen recording program, and read the whole document and voila.
As much as this is a good idea, protecting documents is close to impossible, the only way to make them protected is by showing them in person, and then taking them back
Quentin, I guess the CIA will not be using it for presidential briefings… Seriously, some docs are indeed too risky to be sent at all. But most companies already send sensitive information to external parties and WatchDox is here to significantly reduce the risk of accidental or intentional leakage of this information.
In a business setting when you’re using a product that provides advanced tracking and watermarking deterrence plays its part (not to mention that using a video recording program is not the easiest method to share screen captures).
Actually, it looks like they have a cute mechanism for dealing with that.
The bigger problem is that this is a feature not a product – let alone a company…
How do I know if I can true WatchDox? I’m going to guess they will encrypt on upload (hopefully).
Of course, files are encrypted in transit and at rest. See the last Q&A on how secure WatchDox is:
https://www.watchdox.com/FAQ
many thanks
i may be can hel me
we are looking for a product that will enable us to issue an RFP in Word format, that will enable a responder to complete the required portions of the RFP, but also ensure that the responder is not able to change the questions or any other portions of the posted RFP. Does your product help?