4.5 out of 5 stars
Password program for Mac, Windows, iPad, iPhone, Android
Pros:
- easy to use
- option for it to create strong passwords
- secure
- trial version & 100% money back guarantee
- syncs via Dropbox, so it’s always current
- browser extensions, easy to use in Firefox (at least) with fill in and saving options
- organizes software licenses as well
- options for tagging the info
- available to attach files i.e. photocopies of important papers
- credit card fill-in options for easy online shopping
- usable on many devices – Mac, Windows, iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, Android
Cons:
- price for each device, so although we bought it for the computers, had to purchase again for the iPad
- browser extension can get annoying with popping up offering to save the login info even when you don’t want to (though it’s smart enough to know when you’ve already saved the info)
- passwords created and not saved in the program can be difficult to transcribe – capital I appears the same as lower case l
Review:
For several months, my husband and I have talked about how useful a password program would be for us – a way that we could both access shared accounts easily and more importantly, securely. With the LinkedIn problems recently, this can be even more important – how secure are your accounts from being hacked? Since my husband enjoys research more than I, he found one that he liked. It still took time before we made the purchase and installed 1Password onto both our computers.
You probably already know that you should have different passwords for all your different accounts. These passwords, to be as secure as possible, need to have various combinations of letters, numbers, and symbols. Most importantly they should not be whole words since that makes it easier to hack. This makes creating, remembering, and using passwords challenging. You don’t want to have a list sitting around or a file on your computer simply listing them. This is where a password program comes in useful – they make it secure and accessible to you. 1Password is easy to use; the fields are clearly defined and simple to fill in.
1Password has the option of creating secure passwords for you. You can do this for a site you visit regularly, or you can simply ask to create a password. I recently was working on my computer for someone else, wanting a strong password, yet since it wasn’t my data didn’t want to save it to 1Password, and had them create one. I copied the password and as I went to read it aloud to her and have her write it down, realized it wasn’t possible to distinguish between a couple of letters – it was either a lower case L or a capital I. This wouldn’t be a problem if you use it with your own devices.
My husband and I share the program between us so that if the need arises, we can have access to all the accounts. We each have independent access and are never dependent on having the other around. We have it set up to sync with Dropbox, into a shared folder between us, which means that it is also always up to date. We’ve tried out using it for tracking our software licenses, photocopies of birth certificates, as well as all the various logins we need use. Between the main login place where we can customize the “title” with our names and the option to tag each entry with our names – we never get confused as to whose login it is.
Although I appreciate the option of having 1Password on different devices, I dislike that there’s a separate charge. For the computer, 1Password charges $49.99. If you also want it on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, it will cost you an additional $14.99. It appears to currently be free for your Android phone. I have come to rely on it for my computer, and decided it wasn’t worth it for my iPad – I was that disappointed in the additional fee, although my husband did get 1Password for his iPad.
For the most part, I use it primarily with my browser and in my case that’s is Firefox. This means that there is an icon in the browser that I click, type in the one password I have to remember to open 1Password, it’s smart enough to list the website I am on which I click and all the necessary data is input into the website and it opens for me. The password in the browser resets fairly quickly, keeping my information safe, and it’s easy enough to reenter that one password if I need it for another site. The browser option also pops up whenever I go to a new site and have to create/enter login information. This makes it easy to save new information when I need and provides a good cue that it hasn’t been saved yet (since it does know when it’s already a saved entry). Although when I am working on my computer with someone else, 1Password pops up offering to save the information, over and over again. This can get annoying as I recently discovered although I don’t often do this work and I can appreciate that it’s simply doing it’s job.
1Password is a great program to safely and easily keep our online activity secure. It simplifies our lives so we can focus on what matters – not worrying about how clever and obscure our passwords are and whether we can remember which ones go with which website. It’s a single place to keep all the important information we need to track – from those websites, to our credit card information, to software licenses – it’s all the personal information we want to keep safe yet know where to find it when we need it.
