On Message with Ben Gross

Briefly, 1Password is an application to manage passwords and auto-fill web forms for the Mac, the iPhone, and the iPod Touch. At first pass, the functionality may not sound exciting, unless you are like me and you sit down and think about how many times a day you type in different combinations of usernames and passwords. For me, it is a lot, even if I only add up all the web based-communications services I use regularly. Someday, maybe there will be a widely adopted web-based single sign on mechanism, which will solve our daily authentication headaches, I’m still waiting. Until that time, there is 1Password.

I had read about the application and it had been on my list to try out. Originally, the price put me off from considering it. One day in a fit of annoyance about managing yet another set of accounts online I downloaded the application and tried it out. An hour later I was convinced and I bought it. Six months later the application continues to improve on a regular basis and I still use it daily.

1Password expands substantially on the password storage and form filling functions built into browsers such as Safari and Firefox. Basically, you can enter your web passwords once and forget about them, as it will recall them for you on demand. 1Password supports multiple “identities” which let you save sets of form data such as names, phone numbers, addresses, credit cards, and email addresses and automatically enter them into an online form. The application does a fair job of matching up the fields in most fill out forms to the entries you have stored in your identities. 1Password can also save arbitrary web-based fill out forms. This is useful if you have to repeatedly fill out the same online form over and over again, or if you have a long complicated form that you want to store for safe keeping. It is also useful in case you have one of those mysterious server crashes that only happen after you have spent 30 minutes filling out an online form and force you to retype all the information.

I test a lot of web services, so I use several browsers on a regular basis and regularly trash my cookie file. 1Password works great for me since I only have to enter a single password to unlock the application, rather than remembering individual passwords for each site. My cookie file is essentially is now far less valuable as I no longer have to worry about login information stored in my cookies or which browser I last logged into a particular site.

1Password provides additional protection from spoofed web sites since the forms are tied to specific URLs and even someone managed to trick your browser into displaying a different URL than the actual one, 1Password would not try to fill out the form. 1Password can also generate strong passwords and automatically save them for future use. In a sense you could have automatically generated strong passwords for sites that you did not even know since 1Password remembers them all for you. I would recommend having good backups of your Keychain in case of hard drive failure or other mishaps. The company’s website has plenty of examples and movies to demonstrate the functionality. 1Password stores all the entries encrypted in the Apple Keychain and does a good job managing the autolocking functionality, Keychain backups, and synchronization.

1Password needs to be updated for every major update to your browser and some minor ones. On Safari, it works as an Input Manager hack, which Apple has gone to some length to restrict. However, Safari has no official plugin mechanism only for extending content handling functionality, so Input Manager hacks such as 1Password or SIMBL are common. Under Firefox it is implemented as a standard extension. Updates to 1Password have consistently been available nearly immediately after every Safari or Firefox update. I have yet to have a problem personally as 1Password will regularly check for updates whenever I open the application, which is frequently. Users who only use 1Password from the browser may periodically want to run the application to check for updates soon after any major browser revision.

Overall, I can highly recommend 1Password. It has saved me from endless numbers of keystrokes and aggravation. It is not perfect. For example if a service changes its login form too much 1Password might not be able to figure it out. It also sometimes guesses wrong for some fields when using identities. That said, I have now used it on hundreds of web sites and have found that it works surprisingly well.

1Password requires Mac OS X 10.4.11 or higher. It has plugins that support Safari, Firefox, Camino, Flock, NetNewsWire, DEVONAgent, Fluid browsers, as well as a version that will sync with the Palm application. There is bookmarklet version for the iPhone and iPod Touch that also integrates with the built in browser. There is also on online only beta version called my1Password that I have not tried yet. 1Password will import and export data to several of their competitor’s formats if you want to move your data. 1Password is $29.95, but has a limited free version. The Palm version is an additional $12.95 and the iPhone version currently comes free with the 1Password application. Additional pricing is available for businesses, families, and educational institutions. 1Password is similar in functionality and price to the Windows application, RoboForm, which I will review at another date.

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