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The secret answer

Globe and Mail Update

Latest comment posted at 5:05 PM EDT 23/04/07

Yes, there's something you can do to help with all of your passwords ...Read the full article

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  1. Peter van der Kloot from Canada writes: Well, geta Mac. It has the keychain s/w, which seems to be what you are lookin for..And a password generation module. How much easier can it get???
  2. Phil Primeau from Toronto, Canada writes: I watched a show on Discovery Channel called "Myth Busters" where they showed how easy it is to break the security of fingerprint readers. The easiest was to create a copy of a finderprint on paper....The most complex was making a plate from a finder print to create a ballistics gel copy of the print. Both seemed to work equally well on finger-print reading technology.
  3. Bald Sparrow from Montreal, Canada writes: This is way too complicated - Firefox and Opera and for all I know the new IE7 all remember passwords for you and fill them in automatically on 99% of sites where you need them. Free too.
  4. John Koziar from Oshawa, Canada writes: Maybe having trouble with passwords is an old-people thing? None of my same-age friends have ever griped about it.
  5. Mitch Sprague from Ottawa, Canada writes: Moon Software has a program called Password Agent (or you can download the free Password Agent Lite).
  6. Doug Dewan from Canada writes: Can't we all just have a microchip implanted under our skin that has all passwords, credit card, ID, passport info...basically our wallet. We could access computers, open locked doors, start our cars and buy our groceries by just waving our hand over a reader....love it!
  7. Gord Murray from Canada writes: Learning about programs that record keystrokes didn't make better my faith in password programs computer.
  8. Alberta Boy from Sherwood Park, Canada writes: I use Firefox which solves the problem more than 99% of the time. For the rest? I use an SD card with a passwords file which I insert into the card reader only when I need it. Of course it's removed immediately after I retrieve the info.
  9. Marina Xuereb from Malta writes: I hope Doug Dewan from Canada was joking when he made the suggestion about the "microchip implanted under our skin that has all passwords, credit card, ID, passport info...basically our wallet. We could access computers, open locked doors, start our cars and buy our groceries by just waving our hand over a reader....love it!"
    First of all having any kind of implant (i.e. a foreign body) has its own health hazard. Secondly being regularly exposed to yet another source of artificial electromagnetic radiation cannot be beneficial to health, especially on top of all the electronic smog modern life exposes us to.
    Thirdly criminals would have to harm a victim physically to get what they want rather than "merely" steal a credit card / wallet / break into a house or car etc. so violence assisted crime will definitely increase.
  10. Brian Lowry from Fredericton, Canada writes: Mac OSX has secure keychain software built in, to remember passwords to you r heart's content. A few weird websites block that sort of automatic entry, but it works like a charm. Also, unless someone knows my primary password for the computer the keychain's on, the passwords are all securely hidden (except perhaps from the CIA and their ilk, of course).

    Marina Xuereb: a much more fun/harmful thing for hackers to do with identity chips would be to reprogram people with different identities. At least with physical credit cards and human-to-human face recognition (i.e. looking at people) it takes more than nanoseconds to completely change your identity.
  11. Abe King from Manchester, United States writes: A much friendlier program, but not less capabale, is SignupShield Passwords which is shipped with every SanDisk Cruzer USB drive you buy. You can also download a free desktop version from their website www.protecteer.com.

    One of the features they have which proves to be very useful, is that they can also capture my login credentials when I fill-in a sign-up (registration) form, while other password managers require me to logout anf then login again, after I register to a site, for them to be able to capture that info.
  12. David M from Toronto, Canada writes: Regarding microchips - there's a bar in Barcelona that lets you get a chip implant and use it to queue job and pay your bar tab. Various groups are aghast, but apologists point out that many of the bar's regularrs are already uesd to having silicon in their bodies.
  13. Kevin Creel from Atlanta, United States writes: As per Phil Primeau's comment: The fingerprint reader used with DBS uses a radio frequency sensor. The fake finger trick from Myth Busters only works with certain optical sensors.
  14. Dilip Andrade from Ottawa, Canada writes: In my view, Sxipper a product from Sxip Identity of Vancouver is a better solution still. It functions as a Firefox plugin, and generates mappings of forms by seeking user input and verification. Sxipper is remarkably effective at making signups a piece of cake.

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