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Maybe I am not explaining to well, or I don't understand how it really works. I have my electrum wallet inside a folder named folder A. Inside folder A is another folder created by electrum. In that folder is my wallet file.
Maybe I am not explaining to well, or I don't understand how it really works. I have my electrum wallet inside a folder named folder A. Inside folder A is another folder created by electrum. In that folder is my wallet file.
Yep.
I just want to protect that wallet file and the folder it is stored in the best possible way.
Great.
But can someone who for example have access to my wallet file, load up the file in another wallet and move my bitcoins to themself? Or do they still need my password I have for electrum?
Yes, without the password they can see your balance etc, information about the transactions you received. But without the password or(!) the seed, the coins can not be spend. The seed allows you to create a new wallet (without password) with the same private keys. The password unlocks the allready existing private keys.
I want to protect it just in case. And thats why I asked about some encryption or something like axcrypt or folder lock. But will the protection of the folder be necessary? Or how do you suggest to do it?
In my personal opinion it is not helping if you encrypt the folder. The file is encrypted allready, if you wanted to add another layer, Id suggest you protect the system itself BIOS&boot password, fully encrypted disk or at least protect the user account that has access to the file by setting a userpassword if you dont have one allready.
All these methods would protect the folder as well as the file inside it indirectly, as anyone that would have access to your machine would need at least one of those passwords to operate it or time.
E.g. if you only set a userpassword this can be circumvented by booting from an external device and extract the data that way.
If you also have a boot & bios password, its not possible to boot from an external device, so an attacker would have to dismantle the machine and remove the harddisk. Once the harddisk is in another machine the file can be read.
If the harddisk is also encrypted, well sucks to try and steal your bitcoin. You are still vulnerable to viruses / keyloggers, social engeneering as well the 5$ wrench and drugs attack [1] however.
A encrypted folder would also buy you more time to notice something is wrong, but it would also result in manual steps. You would have to decrypt the folder with a tool, start electrum, do what you want to do, close electrum, encrypt the folder with a tool. While an encrypted disk can be handled by your OS automatically (besides entering the password ofc). I know this works perfectly fine on a linux machine and suspect its also possible for Windows and MacOS nowadays.
[1] https://xkcd.com/538/