Password Boss Premium

 

More and more consumers are becoming aware of just how dangerous it is to use the same password everywhere, or to use a weak, easy-to-remember password. It’s not surprising thatpassword management is a growing market sector. Password Boss Premium ($29.99 per year) is the newest entry in this field, but it’s full-featured enough that you’d hardly guess it’s version 1.0.

You can install Password Boss on all your PC, iOS, and Android devices and seamlessly sync data between them; Mac support is in the works. For $69.99 you can get a five-license family pack and really make use of Password Boss’s sharing features.

Free for a Single Device
As with Dashlane 3 and Sticky Password Premium, if you’re willing to stick to just one device, with no syncing, sharing, or online backup, you can use Password Boss for free. Schools, churches, and other non-profit organizations can apply to get free access to Premium features.

If what you really want is free syncing among all of your PCs and Macs,LastPass 3.0 can be a good choice. You only need to upgrade toLastPass 3.0 Premium if you also want to sync your mobile devices.

Note that if you do opt for online backup and syncing, you can choose just where your data gets stored. Your choices are: Ireland, Sao Paulo, Singapore, Sydney, Tokyo, US – East, or US – West. Some will choose based on proximity, while others may prefer that their data is stored outside the United States.

Easy Install
Every installation of the free Password Boss runs with all Premium features for the first 30 days, giving you a chance to decide whether you want to pay. Once finished with the quick and easy installation process, you’ll create your account and define a master password. As with all the best password managers, the master password is known only to you. There’s no way a disgruntled Password Boss employee could decrypt your data. Conversely, if you forget that master password there’s no way to recover. The program requires a strong master password, and includes a strong warning that you’d better not forget it.

At first launch, the program offers a quick tour of available features, followed by a handy setup wizard. The wizard starts by importing any passwords stored in your browsers (Chrome, Firefox, or Internet Explorer) and turning off each browser’s password-capture feature. Many products import passwords; few manage to turn off capture in the browser. Trend Micro Password Manager 1.9 and Password Genie 4.4 do disable browser capture of passwords, as do LastPass, DashLane, and Sticky Password.

As you proceed through the wizard you’ll enter an initial collection of personal data and a credit card. I like the fact that the wizard lets you text a download link to install the product on your mobile device. It also offers to demonstrate one-click login on any of a half-dozen popular sites—you fill in your username and password and it logs in for you.

As you progress through the setup wizard you can see how close you are to 100 percent complete. However, you can’t get to 100 percent until you purchase the premium edition.

Main Window
The main window of the Password Boss application bears a very strong resemblance to that of Dashlane, and that’s not a bad thing, as Dashlane is one of the slicker-looking members of this category. As with Dashlane, a dark-colored navigation bar down the left side lets you choose various types of sensitive data; Password Vault is the default. Also as with Dashlane, the items are displayed in the main body of the window as tiles showing website logos.

Password Boss also offers a list view that gives more information about each item. In particular, it shows the username, which can be very handy if you’ve captured several logins for the same site. A sharing icon lights up if you’ve shared the item (more about sharing later), and you can click the star icon to make the item a favorite.

You can organize the saved items in alphabetic order, by category, by most recently used, or by putting favorites first. Each character you type in the search box narrows a list to show only items that contain what you’ve typed so far. You should have no trouble finding your saved passwords and other items.

Capture and Replay

Browser extensions for Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer handle password capture and replay. When you log in to a site, Password Boss offers to save your credentials. At this time you can specify an existing category for the saved login, but to add a new category or enter a friendly name for the saved login you’ll have to open it for editing.

Password Boss has no problem with multiple logins for a single site. If it detects you’re creating a new account, it offers to generate a strong password for that site and store the new credentials. It also handles password change events.

When you return to a secure site, Password Box fills in your credentials or, if you’ve saved more than one, offers a popup menu of choices. You can also click the browser toolbar icon and select from the list of available logins; doing so will both navigate to the site and log you in. Double-clicking an item in the main application window has the same effect.

Some websites that use non-standard login pages cause trouble for password managers. RoboForm Desktop 7, AgileBits 1Password 4 for Windows , LastPass, and several others handle this problem with a feature that captures all data fields on the login form on demand. Password Boss doesn’t include on-demand capture of oddball logins.

In testing, I found a number of seemingly ordinary websites whose login couldn’t be captured by Password Boss. These included a realty site, a vintage music site, and the travel site kayak.com. If this happens to you, be sure to tell tech support. My contact at the company tells me they will quickly work out a fix and distributed it to all users.

Password Generator
As noted, Password Boss offers to generate a strong password for you when it detects that you’re creating a new account. You can also invoke the password generator manually.

You can set the desired password length and choose whether to include capital letters, small letters, digits, and punctuation. The password generator rates each password it creates as weak, good, strong, or very strong.

Unfortunately, the default password length is eight characters, which is definitely too short. You don’t have to remember or type in these passwords, so crank it up to at least 12 characters. In addition, the rating system seems skewed. Perplexingly, it gave a strong rating to both the six-character password &O/&j and the 12-character password xlQ&nd9tQlh. The rating system needs some tweaking.

Personal Info and Digital Wallet
During the initial setup process, Password Boss collects a little personal info, along with a credit card. You can add more personal info in ten categories: Name, Address, Phone Number, Email, Driver’s License, Member ID, Social Security, Passport, Company, and Secure Note. Each data type doesn’t include more info than necessary. Name just includes your first, middle, and last name, for example, and Address is just street, city, state, and zip.

Like Dashlane, Password Boss displays your saved credit cards as images, using whatever color you chose. Dashlane goes a step beyond that, adding the logo of the issuing bank, and also creates a realistic image of each passport and driver’s license, matching the actual appearance to the country or state involved.

When you fill in a Web form manually, Password Boss offers to save the data for any fields it recognizes. That’s very handy! Dashlane, LastPass, and Sticky Password can all capture data from forms, but you have to ask them to do so.

You can have as many instances as you like of each data type. When you click a field in a Web form, Password Boss displays a menu of available items and fills all fields matching the one you select. It also fills every other field that it recognizes using the first item of that type that you created, which is awkward. For example, if you click to fill in your name, it will also fill in fields from the first address, phone number, credit card, and email that you saved. When you fill forms with Password Boss, you must carefully examine each field before hitting Submit, to make sure it has the data you intended.

Secure Browser
Password Boss comes with a secure browser built right in. Like theMicrosoft Edge browser in Windows 10, it rejects browser extensions. It wipes cookies and temp files each time you shut down the program. And it uses Comodo Secure DNS to block unsafe sites. It also includes protection against DNS hijacking attempts.

By default, Password Boss automatically uses the secure browser to open sites that you’ve put in the Financial category. You can set to do the same for over 20 other categories, or launch it manually whenever you like.

Secure Sharing
Any password, credit card, or other saved item can be securely shared with others. Just open the item for editing, click the Secure Share tab, and enter the email addresses and a personal message. By default, the item remains shared indefinitely, unless you cancel it, but you can also set shares to expire after a day, a week, a month, or a year.

If the recipient is already a Password Boss user, a popup notification will report the availability of a new shared item. Other users will receive an email message inviting them to sign up for a free Password Boss account.

The shared item remains linked to your account, so if you change the password it will also change for the recipient. However, the recipient can’t edit or re-share the item, and can’t see the password.

In the Share Center, you can see all items that you’ve shared, and that have been shared with you. You can also revoke sharing, or cancel a pending share that hasn’t yet been accepted.

PasswordBox Premium pioneered the idea of a “digital legacy” to hand down your logins in the event of your death; Dashlane and LogmeOnce Password Manager Ultimate offer something similar. That sort of post-mortem sharing is not yet a feature of Password Boss, but it’s on the roadmap.

Security Score
Installing a password manager and using it for your new passwords is good, but for true security you need to go back and fix all your weak and duplicate passwords. Password Box automatically displays a security score rating at the bottom of the password list. If it’s not showing 100 percent, you can click it for details.

On the Weak Passwords tab, Password Boss lists the account name, username, and (masked) password. Clicking the Update button opens the site using your current password. You navigate to the password change page, generate a new, strong password, and then let Password Boss save the changes for you.

Once you’ve handled those weak passwords, check the list of duplicate passwords. This one is slightly awkward, because it doesn’t visibly group the dupes. You need to unmask all the passwords to see which ones are identical, then proceed to fix the problem.

A third tab labeled Old Passwords lists any passwords that you haven’t changed in six. That does mean that if you install Password Boss and add a few dozen passwords right away, all of those will become “old” at the same time. You do get a notification when Password Boss detects a duplicate, weak, or old password. However, to avoid overloading the user, it will only show two such notifications per day.

Mobile Support
As noted, you can install the Password Boss app on your iOS and Android devices, and sync all your data. I gave it a whirl on my iPhone 6.

All of the product’s features are available in the mobile edition. You can choose to enable access with a 4-digit PIN rather than having to enter your lengthy master password. Better still, you can authenticate using Touch ID.

You can launch and log in to sites automatically within Password Boss’s built-in browser. However, for more freedom you’ll want to configure Safari to accept credentials from Password Boss. As with LastPass and Dashlane, you tap the share button, tap the three-dot more button, and enable Password Boss. Now to fill a form or enter credentials, you tap the share button and tap the Password Boss icon. Easy!

Additional Security
Having your treasure trove of passwords accessible on a mobile device may seem just a bit risky. What if the device gets lost, or stolen? A phone thief probably won’t get past your strong master password, it’s true. But for total security you can log into the Password Boss online portal and disable Password Boss on the missing device.

You can also turn on two-factor authentication. Password Box supports Google Authenticator, which means you can also use it with Authenticator work-alikes such as Duo Mobile and Twilio Authy. Now logging in will require both your master password and a code generated by the authentication app. If you like, you can identify specific devices as trusted, meaning that you can skip two-factor on those.

A Nice Debut
Password Boss Premium is a slick and attractive program with an impressive feature set. It’s primed to get even better down the road, with the addition of Mac support, digital legacy, and improved handling of oddball logins. If the next version is indeed even better, it could be a contender for Editors’ Choice. At present, though, that honor is shared by Dashlane 3, LastPass 3.0 Premium, and Sticky Password Premium.