Monday
Oct062008
Organization and security in 30 seconds (or your money back)
Monday, October 6, 2008 at 12:24PM
Anyone who knows me also knows that I am a huge fan of technology. I love to be on the cutting edge, get into the latest betas and also find useful tools to help your everyday life. Passpack is one of many tools that I use every day of my life. I keep information like my bank accounts, usernames and passwords and ever birthday gift ideas for the fiancee in there. I know that it's safe (because of host-proof hosting) and it's easy to use because they are continuously rolling out new features to help everyone store their information securely online.
To show you how easy it is to use a service like Passpack, I created a quick 30 second screencast of logging in/creating a new account using the one of many login methods that Passpack has implemented. Google is by far my favorite (until Twitter-login is rolled out). This means that you don't even need a separate username and password to create your Passpack account. If that isn't simple, I don't know what is.
Check it out and let me know what you think. The good, the bad and the ugly are all acceptable responses.
To show you how easy it is to use a service like Passpack, I created a quick 30 second screencast of logging in/creating a new account using the one of many login methods that Passpack has implemented. Google is by far my favorite (until Twitter-login is rolled out). This means that you don't even need a separate username and password to create your Passpack account. If that isn't simple, I don't know what is.
Check it out and let me know what you think. The good, the bad and the ugly are all acceptable responses.
Reader Comments (8)
New blog post: Organization and security in 30 seconds (or your money back) http://tinyurl.com/44754y
If you have a Google account, you're ready for Passpack. How cool is that? http://tinyurl.com/44754y
/put on tin foil hat
hmmm. honestly, i would *never* do this. trust all of my usernames, passwords, BANK ACCOUNTS, to some third party site? host proof hosting, privacy policies, do-no-evil, etc there's still a ton of stuff in the wild that could jeopardize this [csrf vulnerabilities specifically come to mind]
there's a ton of local password manager solutions [1password comes to mind] that are tried, true, and a bit safer.
I feel the same way as ghostrocket. I don't have the same password on any two sites because I don't trust them. If someone finds an exploit in this and compromises it all then you're really in trouble. That's the same reason I'm afraid of Mint.
1Password is great. Maybe my laptop is easier to own than their server but at least I have control over it and I'm a much lower profile target than a huge repository of everyone's data.
Both of you make great points. I used to feel the same way but I also love the idea of having my passwords anywhere I go. Their single-use passwords are great for places like cafes, etc.
As far as owning the date, it's true that a single server is a larger target but it's only as good as the encryption and security surrounding it. I would be more afraid of CSRF vulnerabilities (like @ghostrocket said) than someone cracking the high level of encryption they keep on the files.
[...] Original Jesse Middleton [...]
hi jesse -
randomly came back to this post because i saw you'll be working with passpack! sounds awesome. and i totally agree with you re: the convenience of online password mgmt.
keep us posted on your work. i'm totally interested in the idea but haven't let go of my some inhibitions i suppose. :-)
keep up the good work.
Thanks a lot! It's been really cool working with PP so far and part of my job is to figure out how to help you A) secure yourself and B) get past those inhibitions. If you'd like to talk, I'd be more than happy to discuss it with you.