RoboForm: Efficient and Convenient Password Management and More Automatic Login, Forms, and Passwords Joseph Moran
Automatic Login, Forms, and Passwords
Arguably, the most useful feature of Pass2Go is its Login Passcards. When logging into a web page for the first time, Pass2Go will offer to remember your username and login for that site and store the information in a passcard. Upon future visits to the site, you can simply click the toolbar (which will automatically display a link to that site's passcard) to fill in the login credentials. Alternatively, you can bypass the one-click login and select an option to have the program automatically enter and subsequently submit the login credentials.
Sites are also bookmarked in the toolbar by default, so by selecting a previously created passcard, the utility can automatically navigate to the site and log you in with one click. (If a site's login requirements include a field that changes each time you access the site, you still create a passcard containing the username and password but will have to complete the login manually.)
When it comes time to fill out a web form, a click of the Pass2Go toolbar will parse the form and fill it in with the appropriate information from your personal profile. (The utility can also flag you when sensitive data such as a credit card number is entered.)
If you're like most people, you're probably registered on a dozen or more sites, and it's a safe bet that you use the same easy-to-guess password on most or even all of them. While this is certainly understandable and convenient, it has obvious disadvantages. As an alternative, Portable RoboForm offers a random password generator that will automatically generate strong passwords (mixed-case alphanumeric, including punctuation) of between 8 and 14 characters. The generated password is automatically copied into the clipboard for pasting into a field, but it can also be dragged and dropped.
Of course, not all important data is meant to be entered into a web page, which is where Pass2Go's SafeNotes feature comes into play. SafeNotes let you efficiently save important bits of information that you want to keep handy. Examples of such information might include a lock combination, an ATM PIN, or other type of access code. A good way to think of the SafeNotes feature is as a more secure and mobile form of the 'Notes' function in Microsoft Office.
Of course, several utilities provide features similar to the ones described above, but it's the portability that makes Pass2Go unique. Thankfully, Portable RoboForm easily fulfills its promise of portability. I transported the USB drive containing the program between a half-dozen different systems and on each one the various features worked without any difficulties. All of the systems I tried used Internet Explorer, which unfortunately is the only browser Pass2Go currently supports. Support for other browsers is planned in the near future (an adapter that offers support for Mozilla and Netscape 6+ is currently available, but it only supports the standard version of RoboForm).
