SIUED: 1Password

The second installment in Shit I Use Every Day is a password management program called 1Password. I first installed 1Password as part of a bundle of Mac software I had purchased, and then it quickly became essential in my day-to-day world.

1Password is simply a vault for storing all the passwords you use on various websites. You protect it with your master password, and it remembers all the rest. It can also generate random passwords for you with more security than something you might use yourself. This program makes it really easy to use random passwords on every website you frequent, and you as the user never have to remember any of them. If I come to a webpage that requires a login, I do a quick keyboard shortcut, enter the master password, and 1Password fills in the details for that particular website and it logs me in.

That’s not all, 1Password can store software keys, credit card info, notes and even things about your identity that you fill in on forms all the time. Then you can access any of that information quickly.

Now for those of you who are concerned about security, the encryption is 128-bit AES encryption. Which Agile software says “would take millions of years for a criminal to decrypt your data using a brute force attack.” So it’s VERY secure, and wont be getting hacked any time soon. The other thought is what happens if your computer crashes and you lose all your passwords? Well, they have that covered too via syncing with Dropbox.

If you have Dropbox (my first SIUED post) installed, 1Password can use it to store your data files. That means it’s automatically backed up to your Dropbox account. This also means that your password information can replicate to all of your Mac or Windows machines using Dropbox as well as all of your iOS devices (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch.) If you install 1Password on any of those devices, and they have Dropbox, then all of your data is automatically available on any of those. Add a password to your iPhone’s version of 1Password, and it syncs to everything else. Edit and change a password on your Mac, and it automatically replicates that change around. So that means your passwords are available on any of those devices at any time. It’s convenience and backup rolled into one.

So save yourself having to remember all of those passwords, and get more secure in the process. Trust me, this is much better than writing your passwords on post-it notes, and worth every penny.