Product Reviews

With the rise of email, internet banking, online shopping and an ever-expanding number of websites demanding login details comes the burden of remembering a bewildering number of usernames and passwords. Steganos Password Manager 2007 ms to ease the load.

Passwords are stored in an encrypted database, so are safe from prying eyes until you unlock them with a key password. Once open, the Password Manager displays a list of your user accounts, each of which can contain a username, password, description and notes, and can be associated with a URL. You can also group login details by type, which makes managing large number of entries easier.

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Password Manager can detect when you first log into a site and claims to capture the username, password and URL on the fly. However, it failed to register many login procedures we tried. We were also unable to log in to those sites automatically even after an entry had been created manually.

Manually creating entries doesn't take long, though, and neither does recalling them. When you navigate to a website that requires a login, simply open the entry in Password Manager and drag and drop the username and password into the webpage. This level of control over the login process is more comforting than the automated process, which can be disquieting. For added security, Password Manager locks after a predefined idle time, so if you forget to close the application your passwords aren't left lying around should someone else use your PC.

Although the automated processes are more miss than hit, Password Manager still secures your login details efficiently and makes them easily accessible when needed. However, a free, albeit less user-friendly, alternative is available from http://sourceforge.net/projects/keepass for those with an empty wallet.