Best Thing Ever: Memengo Wallet
This week we're happy to have Tom Karches writing on why he thinks Memengo Wallet is the best thing ever.
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Anyone that works in IT needs to keep track of passwords. Anyone that uses the internet needs to keep track of passwords. But how to do this in a secure and flexible way?
There are many password managers available, but most of them require that specific fields be set up for each password, and these fields have fixed lengths. If you need to save information that is more free-form, these solutions usually don't work.
I used to keep my passwords on an encrypted disk image on a flash drive. Unfortunately, this requires access to a computer.
The best solution that I have found is Memengo (http://www.memengo.com). Memengo is a web based password manager that also has iPhone and Windows Mobile versions. The web site is free, and the iPhone app is $4.99.
After creating an account on Memengo, you create a wallet, which contains your passwords. A encryption phrase/word is created, which secures the wallet. This password is different from the Memengo login password.
A wallet contains pages which contain the actual password information. The pages can be grouped in a folder (personal, work, etc). When a page is created, a page type is selected. There are a number of different formats like "Bank Account", "Credit Cards", "Phone Numbers", but I like to use the "Free-form Note". The "Free-form note" is a plain text file with no formatting. To transfer my passwords, I cut and pasted my old password files into individual Memengo cards. I like to keep these cards relatively small to allow for faster and easier editing.
I was initially concerned about storing my passwords on the internet, but the wallet is saved as an encrypted file on the Memengo site, and decrypted when the wallet password is entered. So the only data stored online is encrypted.
The Memengo Wallet iPhone/iPod Touch app ($4.99) syncs with the Memengo web site and caches a copy of the encrypted wallet. Since I generally have my iPod Touch with me, I always have access to my passwords. I find that it is generally easier to edit the password files on my desktop computer, but the password files are also editable on the iPod Touch.
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Anyone that works in IT needs to keep track of passwords. Anyone that uses the internet needs to keep track of passwords. But how to do this in a secure and flexible way?
There are many password managers available, but most of them require that specific fields be set up for each password, and these fields have fixed lengths. If you need to save information that is more free-form, these solutions usually don't work.
I used to keep my passwords on an encrypted disk image on a flash drive. Unfortunately, this requires access to a computer.
The best solution that I have found is Memengo (http://www.memengo.com). Memengo is a web based password manager that also has iPhone and Windows Mobile versions. The web site is free, and the iPhone app is $4.99.
After creating an account on Memengo, you create a wallet, which contains your passwords. A encryption phrase/word is created, which secures the wallet. This password is different from the Memengo login password.
A wallet contains pages which contain the actual password information. The pages can be grouped in a folder (personal, work, etc). When a page is created, a page type is selected. There are a number of different formats like "Bank Account", "Credit Cards", "Phone Numbers", but I like to use the "Free-form Note". The "Free-form note" is a plain text file with no formatting. To transfer my passwords, I cut and pasted my old password files into individual Memengo cards. I like to keep these cards relatively small to allow for faster and easier editing.
I was initially concerned about storing my passwords on the internet, but the wallet is saved as an encrypted file on the Memengo site, and decrypted when the wallet password is entered. So the only data stored online is encrypted.
The Memengo Wallet iPhone/iPod Touch app ($4.99) syncs with the Memengo web site and caches a copy of the encrypted wallet. Since I generally have my iPod Touch with me, I always have access to my passwords. I find that it is generally easier to edit the password files on my desktop computer, but the password files are also editable on the iPod Touch.
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