PasswordProtect — A Firefox Extension for Web Accounts Security

Dated: July 01, 2011

PasswordProtect is a firefox extension that helps you with keeping your different accounts on the web safe by generating different secure passwords for your accounts. And the best part — you may choose to remember just one password for logging in!

I can’t remember different passwords for my different accounts

A user may have more than a hundred accounts on the Internet, out of which many may have personal information, bank accounts access, etc. which need to be kept secure. Generally, users tend to keep different passwords for such accounts and it becomes difficult to remember all of them. Also, some users keep same (or similar) passwords for most of their accounts because it is easier to remember. If a hacker hacks into database of a website with low security, he/she might get access to your other accounts as well. One of the most infamous ways of getting passwords out is Password Phishing.

What is PasswordProtect?

PasswordProtect provides a solution to the above problem. It allows you to create secure passwords for your different accounts and lets you remember just one to login all those accounts.

How do I use it?

After installing PasswordProtect, open the PasswordProtect Secure Password Generator — enter the website on which you have that account which you want to secure, enter the password you would like to type in at the time of login and click Generate Secure Password. You will then get a long secure password. Copy it. Open the website where you have your account. Login with your old credentials (without activating PasswordProtect). Change your password to the new secure password. That’s it! The next time you have to login, you will have to activate PasswordProtect and login with the same password you wished to remember!

If you are registering a new account and you would like PasswordProtect to keep it secure just the way it keeps your other accounts secure, just activate it at the time of registering yourself. You don’t have to use the PasswordProtect Secure Password Generator when regestering a new account.

Advantages

1. Securing your accounts with different passwords which are difficult to hack.
2. PasswordProtect uses the website’s address (domain specifically) and the password you wish to remember for logging in. So, even if you choose the same password for every website, the secure password generated will be different as the website’s domain is also used for generating the secure password.
3. You may remember just one password for all your accounts with all your accounts safe.
4. Even if a hacker gets your password from a website’s database, he will not get access to your other accounts because the password for each account at the backend is different.
5. Protects you from Password Phishing. Even if you end up giving your password on a Phishing website/service and if you had PasswordProtect activated, the password you will give will be specific for that website.
6. Protects you from key logging. Unless it is known that PasswordProtect is in use and activated, using the trapped password would be of no use because PasswordProtect when activated converts the password entered in the form to the secure password specific to that website before submission of login form.

Download

Download from Mozilla Addons Website
Code Repository on Google Code

Originally published at vaidik.in.