Author: Terry White

Earlier today I review the SplashID Key Safe hardware based USB thumb drive for storing your passwords and other sensitive files (see the review here). It was during the review process that I quickly learned that they also have an iOS version of their App. Many of you may already be familiar with 1Password Pro as it has been one of my favorite Apps for a long time. SplashID Keysafe for iPhone is very similar in that it allows you to securely (via encryption) store your passwords, credit card numbers, bank accounts, web logins, software serial numbers and just about anything else that you want to keep under lock and key. With that being said there are some differences. The 1st difference is one that I really like. You can lock the App with a Password or Pin as you would expect, but you can also lock with a custom Pattern (see the image below). There are 9 pins and using your finger you draw a pattern connecting the dots. That's how you unlock the App going forward. It's much easier than having to key in a secure password containing letters, numbers and symbols. The app is also a bit more visually appealing offering nice icons for the various categories. However, the biggest difference is that it allows direct wireless syncing with the hardware key. This has it's advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is that your data is never sitting on someone's cloud that could be hacked. The downside is that it's on you to then make sure that your data is backed up.

Use it stand alone

Although the App syncs with the desktop versions and the Key Safe App, you don't have to have any other software or hardware to use this App. The App can work in a stand alone fashion and you can simply use it to store all your passwords safely. Once you have your web logins entered you can actually use the Apps in-app browser to bring up the site you want to access and the user name and password will be inserted if possible and if not will at least be display on the bar above the page in the app.

The Bottom Line

You should not be using the same "easy to remember" password on all of your sites. I know that having a single password makes life easy, but it also puts you at great risk that if someone figures out that password they can keep trying it on other sites to do more damage. The answer is different passwords on each site you log into and more importantly passwords that are strong containing letters, numbers and symbols. Since these more secure passwords are harder to remember an App like SplashID Safe comes in very handy!

You can get it here for $9.99 from the