password

Impressive password manager

Password Depot offers users a safe-house to store all of their usernames and passwords. We found it extremely intuitive to navigate and were impressed by its variety of customization options.

The program requires that you enter a master password to access the program. Very straightforward command buttons line the top of the program's user interface (Add, Delete, Modify, Search, and so on). The Group feature made it easy to organize and quickly locate our different password accounts. Entering new information was simply a matter of clicking the Add button, and inputting our username, password, URL, and assigning it an … Read more

Password-protect user accounts

Laptops are all the rage these days, but they're easily stolen, even from places you think are safe, like work. Even if you just lose a laptop, you probably don't want anyone to have easy access to all your data just by pressing the power button.

That's why the first step (definitely not the last, but the first step to protecting your laptop) is to put strong password protection on your user accounts. Most people think this is a pain, but it's easy to set up and a small price to pay in inconvenience to keep … Read more

Bypassing the OS 9 log-in password

Periodically, readers will need to access files off old computers that they have kept stashed away for years (I still have my PowerBook 150, and will probably never get rid of it). If you are one of these people and have protected your old Mac with OS 9's password protection, there may be a chance you have forgotten your log-in password and cannot access your system. As with OS X, in order to get around the password protection in OS 9 you will need a boot CD, in this case preferably one that's loads the classic Mac OS.… Read more

Basic password generator

Passwords by Mask is a basic program that allows users to generate random passwords and usernames. Although the program is not particularly attractive, it works well enough as a password generator.

The program's interface is a mess of buttons and is sort of hard to look at. The appearance is somewhat dated and clunky, and it could definitely be better organized. Each button represents one of the potential 20 characters that the generated password can contain. Click on a button, and you can select whether you want each character to be completely random, or a number, upper or lower … Read more

Powerful password and security manager

ID Vault is an incredibly useful program that helps users keep their personal information secure while managing their usernames and passwords. While we'd like to see the program deal with browsers a little more smoothly, overall we were quite impressed with it.

The program's interface is sleek and intuitive. The program includes its own browser, and to start, users simply navigate to a Web site that they would typically sign in to, such as their bank, and enter their username and password. ID Vault will then show a prompt asking if the user successfully logged in; if so, … Read more

Basic password organizer

LogonAssist is a basic password organization tool. Although it's not as sophisticated as others we've seen, it's not bad for users needing a simple way to keep their log-in information organized.

The program's interface is basic and fairly intuitive, although there are a few things that could be clearer. For each account, users enter the Web address, their log-in information, and any other relevant details. Users must then both save the individual record and, when they're done adding records, save the entire file. This tripped us up at first and made us wonder where our … Read more

Clever window hider

Hide is an ingenious program that allows users to hide various windows with the press of a button. Unfortunately, the program's unintuitive interface makes some of its features difficult to use, which is a major drawback.

The program's interface is basic, with a box labeled Currently Hidden Windows and another labeled Program Group. It's not immediately clear what a user should do from here, and there's no Help file, but a bit of clicking around reveals that the meat of the program's functions is contained in the Settings. Here, users can set hot keys for … Read more

How to make strong, easy-to-remember passwords

One of the best ways to protect your online security is to have strong passwords that you change periodically. But that's easier said than done. Coming up with hard-to-guess passwords is hard enough, but it's even harder to have separate passwords for different sites and to remember new ones after you change them.

One way to create a password that's hard to guess but easy to remember is to make up a phrase. You could type in the entire phrase (some sites let you use spaces, others don't) or you can use the initials of each … Read more

Breaking into Gmail

Recently, Twitter suffered an embarrassment as a hacker obtained quite a bit of confidential information and passed it along to tech news sites. Apparently, the hacker accessed a Twitter employees' Gmail account and used that to gain access to Google Docs, company systems, and more.

The employee most likely thought they had proper security protections in place. We'll show you how the Gmail account got cracked, and how you can take better care to protect your Gmail account.

Obviously, you should start by picking a strong password that's not a dictionary word or easily guessable. But that password … Read more