A good alternative to stand alone password managers is to use a Firefox browser plugin called XMarks. XMarks is a small program that is loaded when the Firefox web browser starts up. It's primary use is to allow the user to save their bookmarks so that they are available on multiple computers (the office computer always has the same set of bookmarks as the home computer for example). But Xmarks has another feature that also allows it to save, encrypt, and sync web site passwords across those same computers. Instead of having to use a dedicated password program to remember all of your unique site passwords XMarks remembers them all, syncing them to all of the computers that you have activated and provided with the correct master password. Best of all, even the major technology sites such as PCWorld have determined that the way XMarks encrypts and stores your passwords is incredibly safe.
Installing and Using XMarks
In Firefox go to the XMarks web site and download it from the Firefox page. Allow the software to install and then create a new XMarks account (or use the account you have already created on a different computer). Allow the software to merge your bookmarks with the server's copy. Once this is done the program will ask you if you wish to enable password sync. You will need to choose a separate, unique password (they call it a PIN) to double encrypt your password file as it is transferred to the server. Once this is done and activated on all of your computers any passwords entered or changed via Firefox will be automatically synced to the other computers as well. Just be sure to write this password down somewhere safe as it will be required to use the stored passwords on new computers or on the same computer if it becomes necessary to reinstall the operating system. There is no way to recover this master password. If you lose it or forget it all of the passwords in the file will be lost forever.
Once the sync process is complete if a user browses to a password protected web site XMarks will automatically fill in the password you have chosen for that site, making it incredibly easy to finally use robust, secure passwords that can be unique for each individual web site. This will provide you with a much higher level of security and comfort when surfing the web and accessing password protected web sites.
