14 DAY TRIAL // Passwords, you can't live with them and you can't live without them. Every account on the Internet has to be protected by a countersigned and identified by a username. It used to be a cinch back in the days. But now you will have to create an account for everything. It is a bit exaggerated to ask the user to create an account for everything. I found myself in a situation when for downloading a demo version of an application I had to make an account first.
Fortunately, these situations do not occur too often as I am running low on usernames and passwords (I hate to give the same user ID and password everytime). Of course, there are the password managers that can help in these cases. I admit that I would be totally lost without my password manager. It is not much, but it stores everything I need and logging in is a simple matter of copy/paste.
However, there are more features a user should at one moment need from a password manager, like auto-fill or a more secure master password encryption algorithm, or the possibility of adding a link to that account and at one click to open it in the default web browser. All these details and many others make the difference between a good password manager and a bad one. Mine belongs to the latter category as it is almost pre-historic and is endowed only with account details storing abilities.
Sticky Password is a complete solution for saving various account details and providing them to you when needed. The price is $24.95 and the trial version allows you to test the application at its full capacity as time is the only limitation imposed by the developer (30 days).
Immediately after installing the program, the user is introduced in the way Sticky Password works and how it can be used in order to get the most from it and save your time wasted on entering the necessary account details. The step by step guide walks you through the options available and explains them thoroughly. Here you can choose to set a master password for the software in case you are not the only one using the computer, set the computer inactivity time for the application to lock etc.
The system tray icon is the only way to gain access to the account database and to the configuration settings of the software. The auto-fill support incorporated in Sticky Password allows you to automatically complete the fields for different web pages. By default, the application will fill only the username/ID and password fields, but you can add more fields and complete them for auto-form to take effect on the web page. Regarding this matter, each account link can be configured differently.
The context menu of the tray icon gives you access to all the accounts available in the database and if you have associated a web link to them you can quickly open the page by choosing "Run account link" option. The page will open and all the fields will be filled completely automatically. The only thing left for you to do is press the Sign in/Log in button.
Database management window is organized in three separate sections running down on the left side of the screen. Accounts deals with manipulating the entries, adding new accounts and searching for a certain item. Importing/Exporting capabilities are supported by the application. You can export the list of all the accounts to one of the four file formats: CSV, INI, HTML or TXT. No matter your choice in this regard, all the accounts will be neatly organized and separated in the page. Importing can be done only from CSV and INI file formats.
Searching for a certain element can be done according to various criteria. The user can look for the desired information in the account name, logins, web link, comments, account and link and in every of these locations.
Adding a new account presents you with a window where you have to append the account details, enable the sticky feature (associate it with a web link) and add extra fields to be completed with the data you provide. For email accounts you can even configure Sticky Password to press the Sign In button for you. The fields to be added are taken from the provided link.
Each account can have a different number of logins. This way you can have multiple login details for the same service and store them all in the same account.
The Settings section of password management window allows you to change/set the master password to open the application and choose the encryption algorithm you think best. The options run from the classic AES 256-bit key, Blowfish 448-bit, Twofish 256-bit, Diamond II 2048-bit, Saphire II 8192 or Gost 256-bit size key. They are all reliable and protective enough to make the attacker give up the search (it is just a matter of time for a password to be discovered).
What would be a password manager without a password generator? The one in Sticky Password is as simple as it can be and supports generating passwords of up to 99 characters. The advanced settings available let you choose the array of characters to be included in the final result. You can select A-Z, a-z, Numerals (0-9), special symbols ("~", "!", "@", "#", etc.). There is a section that is supposed to give you the reliability of the password, but in my case it does absolutely nothing as it is grayed out.
Restore section deals with recovering all the database in case something goes wrong. There is no backup function available because the application saves the database right before storing any changes, so the process is automatic.
Settings area of the application is equipped with everything you need from configuring the application to "forget" the passwords in the clipboard after a user defined time interval, setting up the HotKeys, position the "sticky" button (supported by the most used web browsers like Firefox, Opera, Avant, Netscape, Netcaptor, GreenBrowser, Flock, etc.). Protection is not forgotten and the user can enable the password protector against trojans, spyware and malicious programs designed to steal passwords. The antivirus installed on your system can perform a scan of the program modules before allowing the modules access to passwords.
Additionally, you can set a different backup folder for the database. The default is on the system partition so it is not too reliable.
The Good
The application is functional, practical and easy to use. The auto-form filling is fantastic. There is no longer the need to remember your account details as Sticky Password stores them all and offers easy access to them.
The protection offered by Sticky Password is diverse and strong. You can set your antivirus software to scan the modules before proceeding to retrieving the password. Additionally, the Password protector feature offers protection against malicious codes designed to steal your passwords.
The Bad
Besides a crash when attempting to use the sticky feature nothing went wrong. However, there are some mischiefs in the application, like selecting the accounts for deleting: you can either delete them one by one or all of them (Shift/Ctrl selection is not supported).
Also, I tried importing a database from an INI file (it had no extension so I had to append it) created with Sticky Password and the software failed to load it (I tried both overwrite and append methods). Not even a restart of the computer could fix the problem.
Trying to export to CSV resulted in creating an INI file on my disk and still could not import any accounts from there.
The Truth
Very easy to use, Sticky Password will save a lot of time by storing your account details (an account may have more then one login information). Launching a web page to one of the accounts can be done with a single mouse click.
And if you want all the database opened in a web browser or stored on your computer in a TXT file there is no obstacle to that. The account details will be neatly arranged and differentiated. Importing has some issues to be solved, but other then this everything is file.
Feel free to try and test the application for the 30 days trial period.
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
