Password Keeper Review: Roboform vs. LastPass

By Peter Svensson, AP Technology Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — Do you use your kids' names? Your pets'? Your favorite color? We all use some dumb passwords that are too easy to guess.

Worse, we use the same ones for lots of Web sites. So if one site gets compromised, or an employee there is dishonest, someone could start trying out that password on other sites where you have accounts, like Amazon or PayPal, and you've got trouble.

Browsers help out a bit by offering to remember your passwords, but that does little good if you are on a different computer or want to try a different browser.

The rescue comes from password-management programs. A couple of them have recently taken a big step forward in ease of use, by storing your login information online so that you can access them from multiple computers. Online storage does raise some questions about security, but it also makes these little-known programs worth another look.

I've used one called Roboform for more than four years. Like a browser, it stores passwords on your computer, encrypting them so that they're revealed only when you type in a master password. It fills out the login forms on a Web page automatically. It also stores your address, credit card number and other personal data, so you don't have to type them in when you shop online. Because it's independent of the browser, you can access the same passwords as you switch between Firefox and Internet Explorer.

With Roboform, I have been able to take those passwords to another computer, but it's been a bit of a hassle. If I signed up for a new Web site on one computer, I had to manually copy the Roboform file that contained the username and password to the other two computers I use regularly.

A free update to Roboform, released last week, takes care of this problem by storing the passwords not only on the computer, but also in an online locker provided by the publisher, Siber Systems Inc. Every time you create a new password, Roboform stores it, in encrypted form, in your online locker. When you log in to another computer, the password is automatically copied over from the locker.

The system is still cumbersome. You have to install an extra piece of software called GoodSync on each computer you need to synchronize. If too many passwords have changed since the last synchronization, GoodSync pops up and asks you to manually approve the changes. The choices are difficult to understand.