Open, Sesame!

In case you were wondering, The Iron Nail broke his brain trying to provide a clear and concise description of home entertainment center setup, and was checked into a psychiatric rehabilitation facility for several months. He emerges from his psychotropic stupor, however, with renewed energy, and a regained sense of optimism that there are some technologies of great potential benefit to the masses that many people haven't yet grasped.

Which brings us to passwords. Do you have trouble remembering your passwords? Have you resorted to using just one or two passwords for everything, and praying they will never be discovered? Do you laugh hysterically whenever it is suggested that you should change your passwords frequently? Do you write passwords on yellow stickies and stick them to your monitor? What about your P.I.N. numbers? credit card numbers? door entry and alarm codes? Do you wish you could manage all those private bits of information safely and easily?

Never fear, Access Manager is here. Access Manager is one of a class of software applications that might be referred to as "password safes." The general idea is that you open the program with a single, master password that you remember, don't write down, and don't tell anyone. Once inside you have the keys to the kingdom. This is the fundamental strategy that all such programs share, but Access Manager, which comes from a company in the U.K., is free, and it has some distinctive features.

For example, most people wouldn't use a long or complex password, even though its safety is directly related to its length and complexity, because the difficulty of typing it is also directly related to its length and complexity. In Access Manager, you simply click a button next to the password entry and it is copied into your computer's memory, and you may then paste it into the password field of the program or web page requesting it. Access Manager will even generate safe passwords for you, following rules that you set for it -- e.g., length, use of upper/lower case, use of numbers, use of symbols, etc.

Many web sites ask you for a response to a challenge (e.g., your mother's maiden name), so that if you lose your password they can email it back to you if you provide the proper response. The trouble is, you specified "Frisky" as your dog's name, and your dog was hit by a car, and you wanted the whole family to forget Frisky as quickly as possible, so you picked up a Frisky-look-alike from the shelter and named it "Frosty." Frisky was promptly forgotten, along with the Frisky-related password, and now you're stuck. But not if you have Access Manager, which allows you to store up to three challenge-response pairs per password.

The data you store in Access Manager is dual-encrypted. Does that make it safe? Well, if you're charged with keeping the national security secrets of even a small country, perhaps you shouldn't keep them in Access Manager. Otherwise, you can probably sleep in peace.

As is the case with many free programs, you can get more if you're willing to pay for the "professional" model -- a mere $25. With Access Manager Professional Edition, you can store its data in a shared folder on your home network and access it from any computer in the house. You can have multiple users, with each deciding which of their passwords should be shared with others or kept private. You can install the whole application and its data on a USB memory stick and put it on your key ring. You can tell Access Manager to back up its data, along with any other specific files you would like to back up, to two pre-designated locations. You can use special Access Manager utilities to encrypt, decrypt, or securely delete (i.e., completely overwrite with gobbledigook and then delete) any file on your computer.

Personally, I began using the free version a couple of years ago, when there was no professional version. I recently updated it to get some new features and discovered the professional version. I was happy to pay to support the development of this nifty little program, and happy to get the new features. It has a very sporty user interface, which takes up very little room on the screen.

So, now you can throw away those sticky notes, forget your mother-in-law's middle name, get a new cat, and use passwords like F6W5kK7mTY!

Enjoy!

T.I.N.