This has always been a pain with so many passwords, logins and other sensitive information to manage that you just can’t keep in your head anymore. What to do?
It used to be that folks stored sensitive login information in a Word document, and put a password on that (which MS Word lets you do). The problem today is that you can buy $50 software quite easily that will break this weak encryption, which was never meant to be bulletproof. Furthermore, even if you had a heavy duty PocketPC PDA or SmartPhone, you have the same breakable encryption problem or your mobile device.
I am experimenting with a program called FineCrypt that is freeware at the basic levels and acts like a secure zip archive. It’s not as intuitive or seamless as I’d like it to be, but it may just do the job on the desktop.
I want to eventually keep login info on a smart phone (likely a Treo 600/650 soon) and friends of mine already want to do this now. So I looked into it. I’ve not tried anything as yet, but I am intrigued by Splash ID. It’s available for PocketPC and PalmOS and has both a mobile and desktop client (both Windows and Mac!). You can define custom fields to protect and record data in, and it is all protected with 256-bit blowfish encryption (the algorithm Bruce Schneier of Counterpane Internet Security devised – and he’s quite the guru on the subject).