KeePass: Hide Your Passwords from Prying Eyes

Posted: 27 Jun 2012 07:39 AM PDT

One software that I would not miss opening each day at work is KeePass. It was this one great day that I stumbled on this software online, and as I was pleased to find this stuff, open source and free.

I like to hang around coffee shops and one thing that bothers me is that I have been keeping a bunch of passwords in hundreds of websites, with a few accounts that are dated more than a decade ago and still not forgotten. On a busy coffee shop people could just walk around my back and take a peek at my passwords, or just keep a good memory of keystrokes, or even the worry of getting sniffed by someone armed with a packet sniffer tool. Or even a keylogger which might have ended up installed in my computer.

Another is prying eyes. If you are in an internet cafe enjoying a cup of coffee anyone can stand a few feet from my back and just take note of the password that I have typed into a website – that is, if I had not memorized that.

KeePass definitely solved all these problems. It’s actually a free software that keeps all the passwords in place. The version I am using as of this writing is version 2.19. This is not a software exclusive to Windows users, as there are versions available for Linux, Mac OS X users and other operating systems as well. iPad, iPhone, Android and BlackBerry users can also download unofficial versions of this software as well.

KeePass Password Safe software

Passwords are hidden under asterisks in this program. This is much unlike keeping a spreadsheet file where all the passwords are not protected from people behind the user. However, this is not just the feature that makes KeePass noteworthy. What I like best are the shortcuts keys/mousestrokes that I regularly use to access accounts that makes copy-and-paste-from-a-spreadsheet a tedious chore.

Send a shortcut key or right-click command to open the website so you don’t have to type the entire URL (well at least bookmarking sites could help, but I find it nifty to really have everything in that software).

How to open the website within KeePass

You can send again another command to automatically type in the username and password and click the “submit” button (or any button similar to that functionality) to automatically log into the website. This eliminates the need to even copy and paste the usernames and passwords. The software does the log in work automatically for you!

automatically-keyin-username-and-password

But just in case it fails in auto-typing stuff, it’s still an easy to key-in that username and password. No, not copy-and-paste thing that you do from a word processor or a spreadsheet: simply double-click the entry under username to copy the username to the clipboard then paste the username onto the username entry on the website. Repeat the same for the password, then paste the password onto… of course, the password entry on the website. For security each copied entry from KeePass such entries will only last 12 seconds on the clipboard.

How to copy the username/password into the clipboard

As seen also from the screenshot, if you have hundreds of accounts from different websites just like me, then you can simply group the entries by making folders. You may decide to group bank accounts together, email accounts together, social network sites together… and yes, there’s a recycle bin just in case you need to retrieve an accidentally deleted entry.

Of course this list is not accessible to everyone. Firstly, it stores files in .kdbx format which cannot be opened by any ordinary means other that KeePass. Upon starting up the software, one can sees the Master Key dialog box.

I opted the first option, to simply enter the Master Password with the password memorized in mind. I think this is enough for me. I chose not to keep a key file because it will be big trouble for me in case I lost or corrupted that file, and it is not secure if another user at my computer figured out which file to feed to this dialog box. I have the same fears too if in case a Windows User Account – would I still get access if in case I decide to reformat my PC?

Since this is just a database stored in a file, anyone can also organize their passwords in different files. I have my own file for my personal accounts, and a separate file for my kid, and another file for my projects.

I cannot pinpoint any shortcomings of this program. To me this little software does the job well. I’m one happy user! With that illustrated above, would you still keep a spreadsheet laid bare on your hard drive?

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