Get the ultimate guard dog for Internet Explorer: use RoboForm to make your passwords more secure and easier to remember. By Nick Odantzis
Published
on 22 February 2008
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Your great-grandmother’s birthday, your dad’s favourite time of year, your auntie’s best friend’s sister’s dog’s collar number. What do all these things have in common? They’re all things you use to assemble your important passwords for logging onto web sites.
You might use these passwords for keeping in touch with friends on your local social club chat forum, or you might use them for more important sites such as looking after your finances with
an online banking service.
Ideally you should use different passwords for each of these web sites,
and where your personal financial details are concerned, you should always make sure that your password is as hackerproof as possible. However, it can often be difficult to achieve this while still
making them memorable – ‘rwn&3£m’ might make a good password in theory, but you’re more likely to remember your mother’s maiden name.
Never fear – a solution is available. RoboForm (www.roboform.com) is a password manager that can create secure passwords and even type them in for you, so you don’t have to remember them all.
RoboForm offers a lot more than this, though. It also comes with a Form Filler, which saves you from having to type in all your personal details (such as your name, email address, phone number)
into an online form every time; and your friends or family can even have their own set of passwords on the same computer, so they will not be able to access yours.
Once RoboForm is installed, it puts a toolbar within Internet Explorer, and from here you can access all of RoboForm’s features. When you visit a web site such as eBay or PayPal, the
RoboForm toolbar will automatically show the login button for that particular site, so all you need to do to enter your saved login details is click this button. The first time you use RoboForm, you
will need to enter a Master Password, which is used to prevent anyone else from using your saved RoboForm passwords. You only need to do this once when you first start up your computer, though.
You can download RoboForm and use it free for 30 days, but after this period, many of the features will expire. After this time, you can download the Pro version for around £15, or the
portable Pro version which runs from a USB memory stick for about £10. The Pro version will also give you phone support, which can be useful if you have any problems.
How to make your PC crack-proof
Your at-a-glance guide to getting the most from RoboForm
Once you’ve installed RoboForm, all its features will be available directly from the top toolbar within Internet Explorer. To use a particular function, just click on the relevant button.
Password manager
1. CREATE A PASSCARD . When you go to a web site that requires a login and password, such as eBay, you can save your details to a Passcard to prevent you having to type them in each time. Just type in your login details as normal, sign in, and when the Autosave login box pops up on screen, give this login a name to identify it (such as ‘eBay login’) and click on Save.
2. EASY-PEASY . Now when you next go to eBay to log in, instead of manually typing in your User ID and password, you simply click on the ‘eBay login’ button in the RoboForm toolbar in Internet Explorer and it will fill in your information automatically.
Form filler
1. INFORMATION OVERLOAD . To get RoboForm to fill in online forms automatically for you, click on the Form Filler button in the RoboForm toolbar in Internet Explorer, and fill in as many of the details as you can. You can add your personal details, address, credit card information and more. Once you’re done, click on Save & Close.
2. NO TYPING REQUIRED . Now when you come to fill in an online form, all you need to do is once again click on the Form Filler button in the RoboForm toolbar in Internet Explorer, and it will automatically enter your details into the form.
Password generator
1. NO NAMES ALLOWED . To create a hack-proof password, click on the Generate button in the RoboForm toolbar. A default password consisting of eight characters will be displayed in the drop down box, but you can change the number of characters in the password (to make it more secure), and to get RoboForm to create a new password, just press the Generate button again.
2. NEW AND IMPROVED . To enter a generated password when you are registering for a new account on a web site, click on the Fill button. When you log in to the web site, it will ask you to save the login and password as a new RoboForm Passcard.
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