OK, I give up! I've tried keeping it all in my head, but remembering all my passwords for various sites and applications has gotten the best of me. As you know and I've said it before, it's not a good idea to have one password for all your websites. Sure it's easy to remember, but if someone gets your password to say Amazon.com and it's the same one you use for your email and your banking site, etc., well you see where I'm going with this right? So knowing that I can't remember it all anymore, I started looking for an app that could keep all my passwords safe say in a password protected note. Well my search lead me to 1Password Pro and boy am I glad I started using this app.
1Password Pro is an iPhone app that allows you to store passwords, notes, credit card numbers and other sensitive information in one place. Risky? Well yes and no. Actually although the app is called 1Password, there really is two layers of protection and actually three layers if your iPhone/iPod touch itself is protected with a PIN (which it should be!). You set up a 4 digit pin to access the app. Please use a pin that is different than the one for your iPhone and different from the one for your ATM card. This pin should be one that is dedicated to this app. Once you've got that pin established there is also a master password too! This is that second level of security that I mentioned. So you can choose to secure something with just the pin or with both the pin AND the master password. It's totally up to you.
At first I thought I would use this app just for keeping a few notes with my data on them. Then I realized that it can do so much more! It's website aware, so that means that you can actually have the app surf to a page like your banking page and enter the username and password for you right from within the app. Having this ability means that you can have a different password for every site you have to have a password for. You can also use the app to generate a more secure password than say your dog's name.
There's a Desktop App too
Well I couldn't just stop at the iPhone app. I wanted this convenience on my Mac desktop (actually MacBook Pro) too! So I bought the 1Password app for the Mac. I have to say that this is probably one of my best purchases this year. It has been a dream to use. Like the iPhone app, the desktop app can auto enter your login credentials right in Safari or Firefox.
It's gets better though. It can also enter your choice of credit cards too. Say you're doing a little online shopping and you get to the checkout page of the site and it's time to enter your credit card info. Well you can hit the "1P" button on your browser and choose one of your stored credit cards to fill in the blanks for you. Now this feature is cool, but doesn't work 100% of the time because it's dependent on how well the page is setup that you're shopping on. I've had it work more times than not. Of course when it comes time to auto fill a password or credit card, you have to key in your 1Password.
1Password also will offer to store the passwords for you at the time you log into a site. This saves a lot of time in initial setup. Instead of having to enter in all your user names and passwords, just do it as you go. When you log onto a site like your Facebook page for example, 1Password will offer to "Save" the login info at that time. Key in your 1Password and you're all set. The next time you need to log into that site, you can use 1Password to enter the login info.
Generate more secure passwords – When you're registering on a site for the first time and you have to come up with a password, now you can let 1Password generate one for you.
You can tell it the restrictions such as how many characters it has to be and whether or not numbers are allow or other special characters and 1Password will generate the most secure password that the site allows. Trust me, it won't be your dog's name unless you have a very weird series of letters and numbers that you call your dog.
Auto Syncing
Well if you're creating passwords on your desktop computer, how's your iPhone gonna get this info. 1Password for iPhone will automatically sync with the 1Password for your Mac over Wi-Fi. Once you set it up, all you have to do is open both apps at the same time and it will automatically sync in both directions so that you have the same info in both places.
The Bottom Line
I wish I had this app long ago. 1Password for both my iPhone and the Mac has been great and a real time saver. Now that's one less thing I have to worrying about remembering. You can get 1Password Pro for $7.99 here from the App Store: 
If you just want the basic 1Password App it's $4.99 and available here from the App Store
Also check out the Mac desktop version here.
About Terry White
Terry is the co-author of The Best Selling "The iPhone Book" 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th editions. He has been active in the industry for over 25 years and is the founder and president of MacGroup-Detroit, Inc., Michigan's largest Macintosh Users Group, host of the Adobe Creative Suite Podcast and a technology writer - Terry White Tech Blog.
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