Faced with tens or hundreds of websites needing passwords, most of us usually give up and write passwords down, use the same one for many websites or, at best, generate several based on a theme.
You can manage your passwords without having to use such insecure methods, however, and one way is to use a password manager such as Protecteer's 1-Click SignupShield Suite. This one is particularly useful as it can be installed to a U3 USB thumbdrive so you can take your passwords away with you at the end of day.
You save all your passwords to the thumbdrive, which are encrypted using AES 256-bit technology. You can then access them using a single master password, which you can make as strong as you like.
It's obviously a highly convenient approach, but it also has other advantages. It means you can choose stronger, more complicated passwords without worrying about forgetting them. You can even have the software generate random passwords for you, which are virtually impossible to guess.
In general SignupShield worked well on most of the websites we tested, even with multi-page login procedures. You can either navigate to pages yourself and have it fill-in form fields for you, or you can use the 1-Click Sign-in button that appears in your browser toolbar to navigate and sign in via a single link.
It's worth noting, though, that it won't fill in server-generated authentication boxes - the sort that pops up when you try to access FTP folders on a website, for instance. And we don't like the fact that you can read each password in plain text by simply drilling down the Saved sites list, once you're logged in.
But there's a lot more to this handy piece of software than simple password management and encryption. It manages to cram in a whole raft of additional security tools and time savers too, including a disposable email address to that forwards from an alias onto your real address, for instance, limiting your exposure to identity theft.
It will do form filling too, and a phishing warning feature tops an impressive list of capabilities that compares favourably to RoboForm's U3 password manager, the desktop version of which we've previously recommended.
It's not especially cheap and you can download more basic U3 password managers for less - Password Safe and Subsembly Wallet Portable come to mind - but otherwise SignupShield offers a competent, comprehensive and easy-to-use way of helping the majority of us adopt a more secure personal password policy.
System Specifications
Windows XP/Vista, U3 thumbdrive
Verdict
An easy-to-use and ingenious way to store, manage and encrypt passwords on a thumb drive.
Author: Jonathan Bray
PC Pro Online