The Friendliest Computer Club in Ventura County Since 1986
AD-AWARE SE PERSONAL
This is a reprint from the April 2006 issue of TOE (The Outer Edge)
By Jim Thornton
Jim Thornton (jasthorn@gmail.com)
When surfing the Internet, a major concern is the potential of exposing your computer and those websites containing your personal information that you frequently visit to unauthorized persons. Personal information ranges from your Social Security number through your credit card numbers, etc. The most uniformed method of protection that you have is to individually password those sites. But with so many of those sites available, a common method is to use one single password for all the sites as well as other secured facilities. This is a terrible thing to do for once someone discovers what your password is all of your secured sites are now effectively wide open. The best solution is to create and maintain individual and unique passwords for each site, etc. But who in the world can remember all of those passwords? My home password list recorded in Microsoft Word is over five pages long and I don’t keep that list on my computer for if someone would hack into my computer, the first thing that they would look for is a password list. So what is a better method?
The Siber Systems, Inc. has a user-friendly password program called IA RoboForm. The Artificial Intelligence (AI) program appears in your Internet browser and looks very similar to your Internet Explorer’s Favorite website list. The difference is when you click on a link to go to a secured website, the RoboForm program goes to that site, automatically fills in your name (username) and password, and the secure site immediately opens up. No longer do you need to stop, find your password list, lookup the secured site’s name, type in your name and password, and then click on Enter. This is something a little like Goggle’s AutoFill but RoboForm goes a step further. In addition, RoboForm offers several other interesting features besides its one-click login – with your approval it automatically fills in the requested data on website registration and checkout forms from a personal data list that you previously created, creates random passwords that hackers cannot guess and encrypts those passwords, prevents phishing (the sending of e-mail messages from apparent established legitimate enterprises in an attempt to scam the receiver into surrendering private information that will be used in future identity thefts) by providing the name and password information only to previously approved websites, prevents keyloggers (a hardware device or software that records all your keystrokes in an attempt to obtain your passwords) as the keyboard is no longer used to type in passwords, and all your data is encrypt to the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), which is one of the strongest encryptions available, and a single computer with multi-users, an individual Master Password prevents multi-access into the RoboForm program and for single user computer users, the Master Password feature may be disabled.
It’s interesting how the RoboForm program has been successful in preventing those fake PayPal websites from automatically obtaining personal financial information. A fake PayPal email is sent requesting the receiver to go to the fake PayPal website for some financial gain. When the receiver goes to the fake PayPal website, the RoboForm program will not provide any information because the fake PayPal website does not match the real PayPal site.
With the program, whenever you go to a new website that is asking for your name and password, it will automatically record the name and password as you entered it and then ask you if you want to add it to your permanent login list. Another interesting feature is the Safenotes, which are fully encrypted and may be used to store your software registration codes, ATM (cash machine) passwords, lock combinations, UNIX command line logins, etc.
There is another interesting form of RoboForm is that you can use its RoboForm2Go version on your portable USB Flash Drive which provides all of your important one-click logins, password information, and form filler and take it with you wherever you go. It is free completely safe when using it on other computers as none of the information is ever transferred to those computers but totally remains within the Flash Drive.
I find the program’s one-click login feature most useful when accessing my webmail, my financial intuitions, my healthcare and prescription organizations, newsgroups, etc. The current version of RoboForm is 6.92 and the program has gone through numerous versions adding enhancements. It is recommended by PC Magazine, CNET’s Software of the Year, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and over 16 million downloads and comes with a 30-day money back satisfaction guarantee, free web and toll free telephone support, and there is full support in over 20 languages – English, Arabic, Chinese (simplified and traditional), Croatian, Czech, Danish, French, Finnish, German, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Serbian, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, and Ukrainian.
There are freeware (RoboForm) and shareware versions (RoboForm Pro) of the program. The freeware version provides all of the features of the shareware version except the number of one-click logon sites is limited to 10. The shareware version costs $29.95 for the first user and an additional $9.95 for the second user. There are several other additional add-ons versions of RoboForm including the one for USB Flash Drives ($19.95), a special backup program called GoodSync ($19.95), a version for Palms ($9.95) and Pocket PCs ($9.95), and a program CD is available for additional $4.95. More information is available from their website .
The program is compatible with Windows 95, 98, 98SE, Me, 2000, NT, XP, and Server 2003 and numerous Internet browsers including Internet Explorer versions 5.5 through 7, AOL, CompuServe 6 but not 7, FireFox, Mozilla, MSN, and Netscape 7 but 4, and it is not compatible with Opera, Macintosh, and MSN TV browsers.
