1 ring to rule them all!

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.

Yeah I took that from Lord of The Rings. I’m not talking about the ring actually, but more of the concept. Being an online freak, I’ve created multiple online account, some of it I use at regular basis and some seldom, which give me a dilemma of remembering all of my username and password. For easy solution, have all account with same username and password. The downside to that, if someone get a hold of it, the rest is history. Having a different password would mean it’s hard for people to break into your account but it also pose a problem to constantly request for forgotten password.

That’s when I started to use Roboform. What’s that? It’s an application that keeps you username and password for every online account that you have. And with one click, it will fill and submit your login for you. Now you may wonder if it is safe to keep everything in one place. Not to worry, everything is encrypted. You could even store your Identity Card number, bank account, and even credit card info in it, and the app will store and encrypted it. If you have heard of key logger, it’s an app where if accidentally installed from any malicious website, it will record your entire keyboard stroke. Imagine if you typed in your username, password, credit card number, you voluntarily given them everything. But with Roboform, you just unlock it with one master password; the app will do all the form filling. I liked the app very much that I actually bought it online, and been happily using it for 6 years.

Boring huh? Well this is where my “geek” sirens flare, because I really dig this stuff. There are 3 apps that I bought or update yearly. Firstly, it’s my antivirus app. My personal favourite is Norton Antivirus because a virus attack is a no no to me. The last major virus attack that I have was in 1999 and it wipe out my hard drive clean. DAMN YOU CIH! Forget about people saying it’s big; it uses a lot of your resources, the company created a virus so people would buy their product because only they have the antidote. It has so far doing what it suppose to do, kill them viruses, malware, everything. That’s all that I care. Secondly is the firewall. I like to use ZoneAlarm firewall. That app also stores my personal information, so that if anyone attempts to steal it, I’ll be notified instantly. And the last one would be Roboform.

That was pre-Mac era. Noticed that I used app instead of software? Yeah, that’s what Mac will do to you.

Now in Mac, they say it will never get a virus. I wont really say that. The last time Mac was attacked by a virus was in 2006, from my web search of course. So actually it is still vulnerable to virus, it’s just that it’s an entirely different system and its time-consuming to create the same virus for different type of operating system. So they go for the most popular ones. But being paranoid, I actually have Norton Antivirus running on my Mac. Firewall is not an issue in Mac, but I’m still having problem with storing all of my username and password. For a year now I’ve relied on Firefox to save my credential. But I still feel insecure because the information is not encrypted. The one stored in Keychain is encrypted but it’s for use with application like Mail, Yahoo Messenger, Adium, to name a few. Err, yeah, Keychain is where your credential stored encrypted but it’s hard to pull it out on your normal browsing. I’m not sure if this feature is in Windows 7, I’m sure it’s not a feature in XP and Vista.

But last Christmas my search have ended. I’ve mentioned before that I met a few computer geeks? One of them is a veteran Apple user. Well he was given a free app to give out as a Christmas gift. The app is 1Password. Pretty simple name doing what it suppose to do. 1Password to control all passwords. Something like The Ring, binding all ring. It has the same function as Roboform, encrypting the data, it even stores notes! The moment I installed it, I’ve transferred all of my credential from Firefox to 1Password. Now I feel much safer. Even though I’m practicing safe browsing, the thought of key logger getting into my system really get into me. Yes, I get really paranoid with my data.

Whoopsie, my geek siren is still flashing. Oh by the way, if you do have a virus problem, Linux is the best OS to clean it for you. And umm, if say the “computer technician” have to format your hard drive and they couldn’t retrieve data in your “My Documents”, that’s a load of crap! Linux could easily retrieve it for you. 🙂

With that, I would like to introduce a guest writer who will be posting in my blog. Watch out for his post, he’s been using Mac for ages now, the same one who have me 1Password. Thank you for that. I’m not sure what would be his writing name, but I’m sure excited having him on board.

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