Abstract
I want to talk about something that to my belief is really needed in today's modern web life : Password Manager & Automatic login program.
These days as web applications become more and more relevant in our lives arise the need for Password Manager , a tool that will remember our Paswords becomes really critical in order to have a convenienty way to manage all of this Passwords and other login information. another need is the need of portability of passwords and login information, since users get less "attached " to their home PC and want their environment on any computer they visit like at friends houese, home work or internet cafe.
Password Manager as a security mean
on of the big problems that arise from the inflation in web sites that require username ans password and other login information , is the need to invent and remember so many of them.
as a result people tend to stick to couple of username and passwords that they can remember, and use them for all the web sites that require them.
When you use password manager one can generate many different passwords and user names and create strong passwords that are not made from trivial words (include a lot of charachters, upercase lowercase and numbers) since there is no fear of forgetting the password.
so the person only need to remember 1 password, then he can invest in creating storng password and memorising it. like he remembers his ATM number.
this is even much better then using the same strong password in all the web sites since
one can easily memorize new main password without the need to replace all the other passwords.
Form filler to web pages
a very powerfull combination is password manager together with form filler.
as mentioned before . today many web sites require login . for example Google, Yahoo, MSN Bank acounts ,etc...
Having an application that automatically fill the login forms with username , password and othe detailes makes it much easier to surf the web and use it as productive environment.
the need to remember different passwords and mannually enter them each time to the login forms of web pages can drive people out of using web applications and currently to my opinion is one of the main reasons that people still use desktop applications.
The portability of password manager .
The physical bound to PC weakening every day. today many people interat with couple of computers at the same time. they have their computer at work, they have one or more PCs at home, they have laptops , they use computers when traveling, in internet cafe friends etc... I thing I made my point. the computing environment is much more virtual today than ever. that is one of the key drives for having more and more applications on web sites. that need dectates the Password Manager to be portable since people will want to have it available on every computer they work with.the options that browsers today offer to remember password are no good since they still make the connection between the physycal PC and the person which is a notion that is passing from the world.
The Password Manager as part of Virtual desktop
Password Managment is one part of the concept of virtual desktop.as mentioned before , people get less and less atached to their PC and prefare a virtual PC or virtual desktop environment. the password manager get a main role in the building of such environment.
Passwor Managment software
The best free password manager I found is at LogOnce web site.
It is also a Form Filler and it is unlimited with the number of passwords it allow to save .
Unlike other applications it is completely free download.
Summary
Password manager is a key feature in the modern web life.it easy the use of web applications and the need to remember the user name and password to growing number of web sites. it also increases the security because people can focus and remember one main strong pasword. the passwords they choose for the web sites can also be strong since they don't need to remember them.
the portability of the password manager is critical , since today people hop between different computers and still want to have their environment in each computer they use.