- Reviewed on: Intel Pentium D dual-core 3.46 GHz with 4GB DDR2 SDRAM (Corsair), ATI Radeon x1300 All-In-Wonder running both Windows XP and Vista
Passwords are so annoying.
I'd love to get rid of them, although I have no suggestion what to replace them with. But I'm getting tired of constantly being lectured about how important it is to make my passwords as complicated as possible and to change them frequently. These admonitions usually come from a po-faced IT guy who seems to think I have nothing better to do.
Well, the eight-characters-with-at-least-one-capital-letter-and-one-numerical-digit password formula and the kind of cumbersome security software suites pushed at us by sanctimonious software makers is a lot of baggage to carry. Thus burdened, it's amazing that any of us can get up to speed on the information superhighway in the elusive pursuit of increased productivity. Or fun.
Is it any wonder most of us recycle the same password over and over again?
Two tools to help are fingerprint readers, which are becoming commonplace on new laptops and are now arriving as end-user gadgets, and password keepers, which have been around for some years but appear to have been snacking on steroids when we weren't paying attention.
RoboForm Pro
Siber Systems
RoboForm Pro $29.95 (U.S.)
I was left feeling disconsolate recently when I learned Symantec had dropped Norton Password Manager, one of my favourite applications. It was the soul of simplicity. I have no idea why Symantec dropped it, and no one at Symantec can tell me.
I searched online for a similar product, and came up with two categories: One a series of evil-looking programs that are free, but are little more than vehicles for spyware, and RoboForm, which seems to be in a class by itself. It is, however, a big program, a little too large for what I intended to use it for, and reminds me of those comically huge firearms used in computer games like Doom.
Like Norton Password Manager, RoboForm automatically saves your username and password. Because RoboForm ties its memory to a website, it will not offer to log you on to a strange website, say one you have stumbled upon that has been created by a savvy phishing scammer.
Unlike Norton's product, however, RoboForm will also store multiple login identities for a single website, should there be several users of a given website using one computer. It will also display and edit your log-in details to change them as necessary, and it can show your password in plain characters instead of anonymous dots.
RoboForm can be set to demand a password each time the computer reboots, awakens from the sleep mode or after a certain amount of inactive time. But this feature alone gives rise to the curious notion that you need a password to access all your other passwords: All a laptop thief will have to know is one master password.
It's comforting to know that RoboForm uses heavy encryption to store your data, such as credit-card or social-insurance numbers and various credit or banking details. It will even create passwords for you, using a random character generator that will compose unguessable passwords.
RoboForm does, however, go over the top. One feature will search for text on your computer; why this is part of a password keeper I don't know. It also has a feature called Safenote, for encrypting notes of such things as banking-machine personal identification numbers and lock combinations. This strikes me as too much. Moreover, RoboForm can also be used as an address book, with each contact having fewer fields not used in form filling.
RoboForm also has many options, and trying to learn them all is a daunting task, especially when all you want it to do is remember a password. Open the Identity Editor, for instance, and marvel at the number of fields, tabs and commands at your service.
By default, RoboForm inserts a toolbar into your browser; when you come to a site it recognizes, you hover your mouse over the corresponding link in the toolbar, then click on the pop-up "Fill and enter" command. It took me a few weeks of grumbling about the toolbar chewing up so much screen space before I discovered it could be removed. RoboForm will still work without it — when it encounters a familiar website, it pops up a little box offering the same options. Much cleaner, much easier.
Because RoboForm works only with a browser — it supports something like 50 of them, with the perplexing exception of Opera — you're out of luck when using any other form of communications software, such as some instant-messaging programs, or local software applications not using a browser. And if a website sends a "Windows system window" popup login, RoboForm is of no help either.
RoboForm will work on Vista and on any Windows-based system back to Windows 95, but not on Macs. It comes in two flavours, one of them a free utility good for 10 identities, and a Pro version for $29.95 (U.S.), which allows for "unlimited" identities.
Fingerprint readers are not meant to be password keepers, but largely fill the same function, replacing a complicated password with a fingerprint. The software, like the stuff you see on TV, not only calculates similarities between different fingerprints, but also the relationship of each similarity to the next.
Desktop Biometrics Suite
$59.95, including one-year subscription
M2Sys
$89.99 (U.S.)
The Desktop Biometrics System, an end-user fingerprint reader from M2SYS Accelerated Biometrics, reads below the surface level of the skin at the deep vascular inner layer of the corium where the fingerprint pattern remains consistent; this protects against things such as skin damage, dirt, dry fingers, oils and variable pressure that might result in an unreadable print. The algorithm, therefore, is more complex than a randomly generated password.
DBS has been adapted from an industrial-strength fingerprint system; its reading technology has remained, but the user limit on the home version is limited to 32.
It's a small rectangular device that owes much of its design to Apple's iPod, and connects via an enclosed USB cable. One major drawback: It will not install on Windows Vista.
Setting up the DBS is a breeze; install the software and swipe up to five different fingers — the M2Sys word for this is "enroll" — to secure your identity.
The instruction booklet tells you how to register a fingerprint: You must place the top joint of your finger on a blue line on the sensor; you must make sure the finger covers the whole surface of the sensor; swipe backward across the sensor at a constant speed and pressure.
The DBS software does that three times for each finger, and when it is satisfied, it presents you with a CSI-type fingerprint with significant sworls and loops circled and linked to each other. Reboot again, swipe one of your enrolled fingers, and you're in.
The application places an icon in the system tray, which displays two menus; a left click will start the fingerprint-protected screensaver going; a right click will display a menu offering a user manager (to add or delete other users) and some options — to change security levels, to check for a dirty sensor, and a method of switching from a domain login to a local one.
Interestingly, the DBS can act like a password keeper too — it can store up to 100 user names and passwords for websites and applications that require password protection.
M2Sys has kept DBS's password-keeping process a little minimalist. But it's impossible to look at this fingerprint reader without thinking about what could happen if it were to be matched with RoboForm. The technologies of each are almost perfectly congruent.
So let me start the idea going by making the introductions: M2Sys, meet RoboForm; RoboForm, meet M2Sys.
The rest is up to you.
