Review: Roboform Pro
Kai Chandler takes charge of his passwords
| Product | Roboform Pro |
|---|---|
| Company | Siber Systems Inc |
| Web | www.roboform.com |
| Price | $29.95 |
| We like | Comprehensive password management and form filler with 30 day free trial. Excellent customer support. |
| We don't like | Licence needed for each USB memory stick or PC that you use. |
| Rating | 9/10 |
| Requirements | Internet Explorer, Firefox or Google Chrome |
Here at Practical PC we are always harping on about the need to use secure passwords. If you use easily guessed passwords then you have only yourself to blame if someone hacks into your account. Best practice is to have different passwords for different accounts, but it's easy to see how the number of passwords will build up beyond what you can remember.
There are several excellent free programs that you can use to store passwords and other information securely on your computer. Examples are Password Safe and Keepass. Another, Lastpass, stores them online although this approach has its own security concerns.
An excellent commercial alternative to these is Roboform Pro from Siber Systems Inc: but is it worth the additional cost?
What can Roboform Pro do for you? Passcards, Safenotes and Bookmarks.
In common with the free password managers mentioned above, Roboform lets you store usernames and passwords as what it calls a Passcard in an encrypted secure format. Internally, it uses accepted encryption techniques such as AES and Blowfish so you can rest assured that your data is safe, although please read the note below about the importance of backing it up regularly. If you wish, Roboform will generate very secure passwords with random characters.
You can also store other important information as secure free text notes called Safenotes. This means you can use Roboform for things like phone numbers, addresses and serial numbers. You can also use it as a bookmark manager to store Bookmarks for sites you'd like to visit again. By storing them in Roboform, they'll be available if you use multiple browsers for example you can have Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome running at the same time and Roboform data will be available to them all.
Roboform has an Autofill function, similar to that of the free Google toolbar. Although it works well on the demonstration page on the Roboform site, Autofill sometimes fails completely to fill all the fields at other sites but it's still a big time saver.
Roboform in action
When you first install Roboform, it prompts you for a Master Password. It's important that you don't forget this. It also defaults to encrypting all your details and lets you set how long your master password will remain valid before you need to enter it again. The default is 120 minutes.
Unlike most of the other tools, Roboform adds a toolbar to Internet Explorer, Firefox and Google Chrome/Chromium.
There is an online option but storing passwords online isn't really recommended.
The first time that you need a password in a session, Roboform prompts you for the master password but once entered, you won't need it again that session.
Where it leaves other password managers standing is ease of use. There's no need to copy usernames and passwords from a program window and paste to a site's login window - Roboform generally just fills in the fields with a single key click - they call this One Click Login and that's really what Roboform is all about. It's a massive time saver and more than justifies Roboform's cost.
When you login to a website for which Roboform doesn't already have the username and password, it jumps in to display the Autosave Login screen to prompt you to save the details in a Passcard for future use. You can easily create folders to organize the Passcards, for example one could be called "Banking" and another called "Work."
If you later want to revisit a website, you just click the dropdown menu on the Roboform toolbar and select the Passcard or Bookmark for that website. If this all sounds a bit complicated, don't worry: it's not! Just try the 30-day trial and you'll see how it works.
Where's the data stored?
By default Roboform stores its data in a folder kept in My Documents but remember that if you store your passwords on the computer it's your responsibility to back it up along with all your other data! I back up daily to a set of USB drives that are rotated weekly but it's up to you to work out the best way to backup your passwords. Roboform offer some optional online functionality but it's still in beta test and I wasn't able to get it to work. I didn't pursue this as I wasn't happy with the idea of keeping passwords online even though I knew that it would be encrypted.
Each Passcard, Bookmark or Safenote is stored as an individual file on your hard disk. In the case of the first two types, they are named after the website to which they relate so if you save details of a website that you don't want other users of your PC to know about, you should override the default name to call it something more cryptic. Storing as individual files seems rather cumbersome and I'm uncertain why Siber Systems took this approach rather than creating a single database file with all the data.
What browser?
Roboform works 'out of the box' with Internet Explorer. To use with Firefox, Roboform installs a small add-in to Firefox. To use with Chrome you would need to download a modified version of Chrome from the Roboform website. They call this Chromium. Roboform doesn't yet support other browsers but this list should satisfy most users. According to the website, it also supports a number of iPhone, WinMobile, Palm, BlackBerry, Symbian mobile phones.
How portable is it?
Roboform is licensed for an individual computer so if you regularly use other PCs you may wish to buy the portable version called Roboform2go, licensed for a particular USB memory stick.
Once activated, Roboform is tied to a particular PC, or in the case of Roboform2go, memory stick. It's possible to transfer the licence to another device if, for example, you buy a new PC or stick.
Once you've purchased Roboform, it's relatively cheap to buy second and subsequent licenses - at current prices, you'll need to find an additional $10 for each secondary computer and an additional $20 for each USB drive but I really think they should be included in the basic cost.
Roboform also sell a complementary product called Goodsync which can be used to synchronize passwords between PC and memory stick should this be required but there are plenty of freeware alternatives so I didn't look at this in any great detail.
In the course of this review, I had several questions that were promptly answered by Roboform's excellent customer support team which is always a good sign.
And to sum up.
Roboform Pro is an excellent password manager with great customer support. It offers some advantages such as ease of use and form autofill over the freeware alternatives but as you have to purchase a licence for each PC or memory stick it's not a cheap option. As described above, you should be aware that it leaves files on your hard disk named after each website for which you are storing a password which, for some, may be a privacy concern.
The 30 day free trial, available from the Manufacturer's website, www.roboform.com, gives you a chance to put Roboform through its paces before parting with any money for the Pro version. There's a variety of bundle prices on the website if you want to explore the options on more detail.
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