Product Review: Sticky Password 4.0

Before we get too far, we need to understand what the primary purpose is of Sticky Password. At its very essence, it is a password management and security application. It stores accounts and their corresponding password in a secure location, and allows you to use them if you know the master password. Thus the product allows you to maintain as many accounts as you can handle without the need to memorize any of them, except one master password or as long as you have a USB/bluetooth device. As a secondary feature, it is also a form filler. If you would like to read more about the marketing perspective on this product, visit the Sticky Password website.

If you wish to evaluate the product yourself, you can download it. It is only 5.38MB. The product retails for at least $22.50--not too bad for something that can help make your Internet experience more secure!

Sticky Password version 4.0.0 can literally be installed in less than one minute. Once installed, it is relatively easy to use.

The very first thing you have to do is to decide how you wish to unlock the password database. You have a choice of using a password, a USB device, a bluetooth device, or none.

At first I thought that using a USB (which could be an MP3 player, a thumb drive, an external USB drive, or any other data storage USB device) or a bluetooth device would be the best way to secure your accounts and passwords, but after assessing the various potential scenarios, I've come to the conlusion that the "password" approach was the least risky of all. Here's my reasoning: devices break or can be lost; once broken or lost, there would be no way to unlock the device. The only advice I have to effectively use this product using a "master password" as the unlocking mechanism, is to pick a master password that is hard to guess.

Thereafter, when you visit a site and you have to provide login credentials, the tool will prompt you to save and add the account to the database if it doesn't already have it. Any site with their accounts saved in Sticky Password can then be accessed in the future by simply selecting that account from the accounts list. This action will launch the browser, go to the site, and login for the user automatically. Or if you simply go to the login page, it will do one of two things: log you in automatically or fill in the credential fields for you.

Note that the version I installed seem to only have support for Internet Explorer and Firefox. I tried it on Google Chrome and it didn't seem to have a plugin for it; however, it can allow you to see the account name and copy the password to the clipboard, so that all you have to do is paste the password into the password field, then login.

Overall, it does what it promised it would, and it does it for you effortlessly!

What? You don't always use the same computer when accessing your Internet accounts? Well, don't worry, this product is portable. If you prefer setting up Sticky Password on a USB thumb drive, you can. It will store your password database in the thumb drive and you can select to run it when the computer detects the presence of the USB drive. Thereafter, the operation is similar to the locally installed version.

One of the downfalls of any password management and security tools is the lack of defense against keyloggers. What good is your password security when a keylogger can easily read and store your master password?

We'll with Sticky Password, you don't have to worry about that. You just need to make sure you use the virtual keyboard when entering the master password. There...problem solved!

I highly recommend this product. For the price, it is definitely a high value per dollar ratio. It has a form filler function capability, but its real value is in its capability to manage and secure multiple accounts.