As mentioned in an earlier post its a really frustrating job managing your passwords and protecting them from intruders. In the following post and my upcoming posts, I will be reviewing a bunch of online tools that will help you manage your passwords better both online or offline.
Benefits of using an Online Password Manager:
Online tools are a big help now a days and we prefer to use them most often. No installation, ready to use and maintenance free. So when your computer acts weirdly you need not worry about your essential passwords stored somewhere in your computer.
Also the online password managers are hosted in ’strong rooms’ which has hardly got any chance of getting hacked. The brains behind those projects knows the loop holes better than we do. Here is a nice exaplanation by Passpack on how secured their system is. Hence, rather than storing passwords in your browsers, its better to store them in a trusted online manager.
In the following post let me review Passpack, a tool you may use to safely store and reuse your online identity keys, the passwords.
What is Passpack?
Passpack is an online password management tool that lets you store 100 passwords in the most convenient way possible. Apart from its uniquely designed feature sets, it has a very user friendly AJAX powered UI which is simple yet powerful enough to meet the requirements.
Why use Passpack? Feature sets:
- Manage upto 100 passwords. How to bypass this barrier? Check this Passpack tip by
Francesco Sullo, the co-founder himself! Thanks a lot for the tip! - Packing key - easy to remember sentence (anything like: Who am I?) that you need to type everytime you login to Passpack. Makes your login less vulnerable.
- Also prompts for the Packing key if you are idle for more than 5 minutes (customizable).
- When entering a new password, allows you assign a name to an entry and store user id, email address, link of the site.
- Lets you associate tags (for easier password management), keep notes.
- Allows you to share passwords among multiple users through ‘invitations’. This is specially helpful if you are a part of a team of developers wanting to maintain a single repository of most needed passwords.
- Auto search feature, associated tags and alphabetical arrangement of passwords makes search for a password easier.
- PassPack It bookmarklet lets you auto-login to any accounts with the click of a button (just like Roboform). You need to enable this feature to use.
- Assign security level (Single/Double/Triple) to a particular password for highest security.
- Password suggestions and strength meter lets you choose the most secured password.
- Import, export, print, backup and restore passwords anytime.
- Disposable Logins - This is an unique Passpack feature which allows you to generate 3 passwords for one time usage only; specially helpful if you are accessing Passpack from a public computer.
It works ‘well’ Offline too!
Passpack’s Offline version lets you work when you are disconnected from the internet. The offline version is built with Google gears and requires a browser to access.
Apart from that it also offers an Adobe Air based desktop version of their online management tool which works in Windows, Linux and Mac. You may use it in two ways:
- If you are a Passpack account holder you may connect to the internet and synchronize with your online account as also between infinite number of Passpack Desktop installations via your online account. Auto-login, anti-phishing, disposable logins, messaging and sharing is not supported though.
- If you are/you are not a Passpack account holder use the desktop version to maintain all your offline passwords.
Start using Passpack | Adobe Air based desktop version | Offline version
Do visit us again!
A tip: You can create two (or more) Passpack accounts and share passwords to bypass the 100 entries limit.