Review: SplashID — Protect Your Private Information With Ease

Posted by: dgoldring on Feb 25 2007 - 2,610 views

 

It seems like every time I visit a web site, I am asked to create a password protected account.  Frankly, I have a hard enough time remembering which web sites I have visited, let alone my username and password.  For a while, I remedied this problem by simply using the same password for everything.  This hardly seems secure now.  Besides, in today’s times, you are supposed to have a complex password with capital and lowercase letters, as well as a symbol, number and Cyrillic character (OK, I made that last one up for now).  What this means is a lot of random, nonsensical character strings make up most of our passwords.  Good luck remembering all of that.  Well, now you do not have to remember because the good folks at Splash Developer have given you Splash ID, one convenient location on your mobile device in which to store all of your passwords, as well as your credit card, bank account, and other information.

Installation and Registration: Download the installation file and run it from your desktop.  SplashID will be installed onto your device via ActiveSync. Additionally, this file will simultaneously install the desktop version, as well as the User Guide.  You can use the whole package for 30 days before you will be required to register the product.

Overview: SplashID is part of a growing and increasingly necessary genre of personal identification managers, programs which are frequently referred to as digital wallets.  This program will store all of your personal and private information on digital cards, including: credit cards, calling cards, passwords, PINs, and virtually any other information you want to have available on your mobile device, but also stored securely (apparently writing your Internet passwords on the back of your desk blotter or on sticky notes attached to your moitor is no longer considered secure).

List View: This is the main user interface with SplashID.   Each time you start the program, it will open to the List View.  As the name implies, this will show you a list of all of the entries you have made.  By default, they will be listed in alphabetical order, however, you can change this to order the list according to any of the fields displayed on the screen.  Just tap the column header to sort by the field assigned to that column.

Once you start inputting data, however, you will find that this list view can become quite unwieldy.  Hunting through 100 entries to find the password for your cell phone voicemail is simply not practical.  As such, SplashID offers the ability to filter your list both by type (the various templates such as credit card or passwords) and category (grouping of entries such as personal or business). 

While this filter function is convenient, I would still like to be able to create multiple lists of entries, each protected by a separate password.  This way, even if someone did manage to break into my personal list, they would still not have access to all of my information.  This type of compartmentalization is critical to a program like this.

Detail View: Tap any item in the list view to open the detail view for that specific item.  This view will display any information you have entered relating to that entry. 

Edit View: At any time, you may enter the Edit View, which allows you to modify existing entries or create whole new entries.  This is probably the most important part of the program, because it is the primary means of controlling your data.  I found, like SplashData’s other programs, data entry was easy and intuitive.  Whenever possible, data could be entered by utilizing a pull down menu (such as when assigning a type or category). 

Security:  The most important feature in a program such as this is the overall security.  This is a program designed to store your most important personal information: passwords, credit card numbers, bank account information, social security numbers, basically everything that you would need to steal someone’s identity.  So, the ability to securely lock the program is critical.  SplashID takes several important steps to ensure that your private data remains private.

First, the program can be password protected.  This means you cannot open the program without entering the password.  SplashID offers 256-bit Blowfish encryption, and I cannot imagine using such a program without turning on this feature.  In addition to turning on when the program is opened, you can also lock the program if you need to walk away from your device for a moment.  Just hit the padlock icon, and the program will lock.  Simply enter your password to unlock it.  Likewise, if you leave the program open for a set period of time without any activity, it wil automatically lock, even if you do not lock it manually.

You can create your own password utilizing any combination of letters, numbers or symbols; or you can let SplashID create one for you.  Remember, the strongest passwords use a random combination of letters, numbers, and symbols, and cannot easily be translated into a word.  For this reason, SplashID also includes a random password generator.  Just select the character types you want to use in the password, (lowercase letters, uppercase letters, numbers, and symbols) and tell it how many characters to use (I suggest 6-10 characters).  The program will then generate a random password which will be assigned to the program.  This is a fantastic way to ensure that your data is secure.  By utilizing a random password, it will be impossible to use your personality against you and "break the code". 

The only problem I saw was that there seems to be no limit to the number of incorrect attempts you can make to try to guess the password.  In order to increase the security of this program, it should lock down after three incorrect attempts, and not let you guess again for a period of time.  Without such a limit, the program is still vulnerable to a dedicated hacker.

Finally, in addition to securing the entire program, you can also use field masking to hide certain entries.  For example, you can field mask your website password.  This means in list view, the program will display only "****" instead of the password or other entry in question.  To view just tap the mask/unmask icon on the bottom of the screen. 

Sharing Entries: Sometimes, you may need to share one of the entries from your list.  This could occur if you are exchanging insurance company information following an accident or sending a business card.  SplashID makes it easy to beam this information to another mobile device users.  Of course, this does not help if the other person is not a mobile device user as well.  There should be a way to quickly send information via email as well.

Customization: One of the things I really appreciated about this program is that it is fully customizable.  You can control the values for each field, as well as which fields are displayed.  You can also modify the color and even the icon assigned to each entry.  Additionally, if none of the template types seem to fit your entry, you can always create a new type or category.  This customization ensures that there is always a way to make the program fit whatever your data needs may be.

Desktop Companion: A program like SplashID would be virtually useless without a desktop companion.  Let’s face it, that is a lot of data to enter using the onscreen keyboard.  SplashID includes SplashID desktop, which provides identical functionality as the mobile version.  It also will sync all of your data, which means you can easily input data on your desktop and quickly sync it onto your mobile device.  This is a necessary feature, which I was happy to see was included at no additional cost.

Conclusion: SplashID provides an excellent alternative to my preferred password storage method, writing them on a sticky note or on my deskpad.  Of course, my methods do not do much for security.  With mobile devices becoming more prevalant and more powerful, it only makes sense to utilize them to store all of your passwords and other private information.  I liked the fact that this program came with an simple user interface which made it easy to enter data on your desktop and sync it to your mobile device later.  While I would have appreciated the ability to create multiple lists with different passwords, I felt this program performed the available functions more than adequately.  Finally, the 256-bit Blowfish encryption ensures that all of your data will remain safe and secure…which is more than I can say about the passwords stored beneath my desk blotter.

Vital Statistics:

Name: SplashID

Version: 3.4

Platform: WM 2003 SE

Also Available: WM5, Palm OS, Smartphone, Blackberry, Symbian, Series 60 (Nokia) 

Developer: SplashData 

Available From: SplashID

                           JAMM Store

 Price: $29.95

 SplashID is also available as part of the SplashWallet package, which also includes SplashPhoto and SplashShopper (SplashMoney is also included in the Palm OS version).  The SplashWallet package costs $59.95 at the JAMM store.

 

Technorati Tags: SplashData - SplashID - Just - Another - Mobile - Monday

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