What is the best solution to manage all my website authentication details?

Almost every single website requires authentication. Whether it's for my work, hobby, socialising, tech support or whatever, they all require me to enter my email address and choose a username and password. My first choice of username is not always available, so how can I remember all these different details for different sites?

OpenID is rarely available. My current solution is to gmail myself the site name and login details. I'm imagining something like delicious, but for login details, perhaps with a firefox plugin to automatically appear when I'm on a site's login screen.

Is there some other system that exists now that works really well? It would be most useful it it was cloud-based.

Random

Posted 2010-08-24T11:16:10.143

Reputation: 33

Answers

I'd recommend having a look at LastPass. It has all of the features that you have mentioned; access from anywhere, plugins for all popular browsers, 1-click login and form filling. If you want to pay $1 per month for LastPass Premium you can access your passwords from the common phone platforms.

I don't actually use LastPass myself - I started using PassPack and can't be bothered migrating across. As far as I known, PassPack does not integrate with the browser or do form filling.

Ajw

Posted 2010-08-24T11:16:10.143

Reputation: 331

LastPass sounds great, but I'm disappointed by the 7Mb download. A browser plugin really needn't be that large, especially since I'll be needing to download it wherever I go. – Random – 2010-08-24T14:32:47.003

1You should only need to install the browser plugin on your main computer, the rest of the time it is easier to use the web interface .. do you really need the features of the plugin everywhere you go? – Ajw – 2010-08-24T15:35:42.497

You're right, I don't need to install the plugin at all. I can just go to lastpass.com and all my logins are listed right there. And it's free. I especially love the auto-login feature! – Random – 2010-08-25T08:53:15.643

After using LastPass for a while, I'm a little disappointed.

It wrongly autofills my Youtube username for my Gmail account, and it frequently gets confused when there are more complex login screens, for example if I click a site's "I've forgotten my password" link. It's not very intuitive. And the "would you like me to remember this password" bar pops up ALL THE TIME, even after I've already told it to remember the password. And it didn't turn of Firefox's built-in password recognition, even though I asked it to. – Random – 2010-09-03T08:54:59.553

1Password works terrifically well if you have a Mac-When you visit websites, it can automatically insert the credentials for you, saving you time and allowing you to use strong passwords that you wouldn't necessarily remember.

JFW

Posted 2010-08-24T11:16:10.143

Reputation: 2 094

Thanks JFW, I just found this page of similar software, too: http://alternativeto.net/software/1password/

– Random – 2010-08-24T11:26:43.367

1password works great, especially combined with dropbox to make it available on multiple computers. It will also work well from a thumbdrive. They now have a Windows client, as well as iPhone and Android apps. – KeithB – 2010-08-24T12:33:42.093

Firefox has a very good and secure password manager built-in.

In addition, - for more complex websites - I use iMacros for Firefox to create browser macros that not only log me in, but also complete a certain task at the same time (e. g. triggering the download of my monthly bank statement!). The same free addon is available for IE and Chrome (Mac, Linux). I think it is best described as web browser macro recorder.

DFrohnmeier

Posted 2010-08-24T11:16:10.143

Reputation: 84