Raul, Thanks so much for the amazing step by step. This was extremely helpful. Much appreciated and I love the fact that Dropbox can be used.
Best, Rick -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Raul A. Gallegos Sent: Wednesday, November 07, 2012 10:05 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Keeping track of passwords across multiple platforms - Was Re: Can I Password Protect a Dropbox File Hello Eric, Rick, and others who are interested in password syncing and keeping them handy. Here's what I highly recommend. MiniKeePass from https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/minikeepass-secure-password/id451661808?mt=8 . Here's why. First, download the KeePass program for your PC from http://keepass.info/ and install it. I will cover using the iOS version, but first will cover the PC side of things. I just go with the version 1.x version and it works very well. When I open this program in Windows I create a new database. You can call it whatever you want. Your name is probably a good choice. This file will have a .kdb extension. This file can be saved in Dropbox so that you have access to it from MiniKeePass from your iOS device. Keep in mind that the MiniKeePass app doesn't read the dropbox located file directly, instead you have to use an app like Dropbox to open the file, and MiniKeePass will be one of the choices. Or, the other thing you can do is upload it from the iTunes file sharing when your device is connected. This isn't exactly automatic syncing, but as long as you know this, and as long as you remember to update the file after making a change either from the iDevice or the PC, then you will be good to go. Although the bulk of my message is on how to use the iOS app, some of it will cover using the PC version, which BTW, is very accessible with Window-Eyes on Windows 7. I would imagine it should be similarly accessible with other screen readers. First, the PC. When you run the program, and you already have a database file handy, you are prompted to open it using your password. Please keep in mind that if you lose the password, you are SOL, because this is all local, unlike LastPass or 1password, and there is no reset tool. Once the file is open, you have a general category and various subcategories. Just so you know, I got rid of all the subcategories and have everything in general. You can press delete to delete something. When you are at the general section, tab twice to get to the actual entries. Now you can use first letter navigation to get to what you cant, or you can arrow to the one you want. By default it will show the name of the entry, your user name, and the url. The password, for security reasons is now shown. I believe that Rick was asking how you do the actual login. Here's where it uses some manual switching because it's not automagic like LastPass. To copy the user name to the clipboard, press control-b. To copy the password press control-c, to open the url press control-u. So, what I do, since in most cases I know the user name and don't need to copy it, is press control-c to copy the password, then control-u to open the url. Because KeePass is awesome and secure, the password is removed from the clipboard after about 10 seconds. I don't remember if this timing can be changed. So, if you are a bit slower, open the url of the site you want to log into, type your user name, and when you are ready for the password, alt-tab to the Keepass entry and press control-c for the password, and then alt-tab to the web page where you are ready for the password and press control-v to paste. I use a clipboard manager to store copied information, and even using that, the password is removed from the clipboard memory after a bit. I really like that feature. Of course, you should add an entry before you use this, right? I should have mentioned that first. To add a new entry into your KeePass database, press control-y. Now type the name of the entry. Let's say Apple ID. Press tab to reach the user name and type that in. In my case it might be [email protected]. Next press tab and you will reach the password entry. You can type the password you already use, or you can press tab to the button which Window-Eyes just reads as button and press space on it. This is the random password generator button. KeePass is very good about the random passwords it generates for you. Obviously you only want to use this when creating a new account on a web site, or if you are changing an existing account's password. In any case, after the password edit box and random button, pressing tab again takes you to the confirmation edit box. Either manually type your existing password in again, or just skip it if you used the random generator since it will already be in there. Now tab to get to the url edit box. Type in the url, example. http://appleid.apple.com and then press tab. This will take you to notes. you can put notes in here to talk about your entry. For example when I added my bank entry, this is where I put in my routing number, account number, and visa debit card number. The rest of the things you can do when adding a new entry are more advanced and not used by me, so I won't cover them. However you can attach a file to the entry, maybe a picture of a card, or photo ID, or whatever. In any case, the user name, password, url, and notes are enough for me. Press tab until you reach the ok button and press enter. Bingo!!! You have a new entry in your database file which you added from the PC. If you are a lastpass user or other secure password of some other kind user, you can import various formats into KeePass so you don't have to manually enter everything. Also, there is a plugin I read about which does the opening of the web page for you, enters your user name and the password and presses enter for you all automagically, but I haven't gotten that or verified if it works or not. In the mean time, doing it this way is enough for me because in most cases I already go to the url I want, and enter the right user name, so it's just a matter of getting the password in the clipboard for pasting. The kdb file can be located wherever you want, my documents, or whatever, but the neat thing is you can save it in your Dropbox folder. I wouldn't recommend the public sub-folder, but hey, maybe you like living on the edge. Now next is the MiniKeePass app from the iPhone. When you first open the app, it tells you that you have no databases. You can create a new one if you will not be copying the PC version, let's say that you only want to keep secure information local on your iDevice and so all I wrote about the usage of the PC program above is worthless to you. Or, if you want to use both, you can import the existing database. To create a new database, just tap add, and give it a name and type the password for it twice to confirm. Now, you have a new one which you can add things to or whatever. I'll get back to that later. To import an existing database you can use file sharing, or dropbox. If using file sharing, connect your iPhone to the pc, run iTunes, arrow to the device section, tab to the apps section and press space, now f6 until you reach the file sharing apps section. down arrow to MiniKeePass and then tab to the add button. Press space and locate the database file you want to add to MiniKeePass. tab to apply and press space. It sounds like a lot of steps, but is really easy. If you want to import via dropbox, make sure the kdb file is in your dropbox account folder, then from your iPhone open the dropbox app or something similar which can read files from dropbox.. Double-tap and hold on the keepass database file and one of the choices will be to open it with MiniKeePass. That's all there is to it. OK, so, now the usage of the iOS app. First let's cover adding a new entry. Once the database is open, you will find the general category and maybe some other ones. As I mentioned before I erase the other stuff and only keep general. To delete a category, do the standard delete of double-tap and hold, then slide to the right. Then double-tap to confirm. I don't know if the iOS 6 action rotor will work here since I don't have iOS6 yet. In any case, double-tap the general category so you can open it. Now to add an entry, find the add button on the bottom right, then tap that. You will be asked to add a group, i.e. category, or new entry. Choose entry. You are taken to the new entry screen. For the most part the edit fields here are the same as the KeePass program on the PC. Title, user name, password, url, and comments instead of notes. There is also an attachment button labeled 48 button, but I don't use that. Right next to the password field is a wrench button. This takes you to the random password generator screen. You can choose what kind of random password to generate, i.e. the length, and what character sets to use. When finished here, press done. Then you will see a random password already filled in for you. Pretty nifty I think. Once you have filled in the title, user name, password, url, and any comments or notes, tap the done button if the keyboard is present. It's a bit misleading because once you have the information in, you can tap cancel to go back. and the entry is still saved. At first this threw me off because I thought it would cancel the entire entry. However I think when you add a new entry, what's actually happening is a blank new entry is automatically reserved in the database and all you do is fill in the space with the information, so the entry is already created and you are just canceling or going back to the main list. So, don't let that confuse you. Now you should see in the list that you have the new entry. Hopefully you removed the words new entry and gave it a real meaning. Here's where it gets fun. Double-tap the entry you want to look at. If there are notes, they will be shown here. As I mentioned before, for my bank entry I have my account numbers, etc. So if I need them to tell someone on the phone or whatever, I get them from here. But let's say you want to log into a site, or need to type in a password, I'll use MyCheckFree for this. The entry for MyCheckFree has of course the title as My Check Free, the username as what I use, and the password for it. Along with all this is the url since you kind of need that. So first I double-tap the password entry. the phone prompts me with 2 choices, copy or edit. Choosing edit will let me edit the password, but copy will of course copy it to the clipboard. Now I double-tap the url entry and I am prompted to open or edit. I choose open of course and am taken in Safari to the my check free web site. Since I already know my user name, I proceed to type that into the user name field, and then use the rotor to get to edit and flick down to paste and paste in my password. In closing, you can of course pin or password protect the MiniKeePass app itself, but since your database already has a password of its own, to me this is a bit redundant. I'm paranoid, but not that much. If you will be using both a PC database and iPhone database and you want to keep them synced, remember this isn't automatic. So, to some that will be marks down. It's fine for me however and as long as I remember to update my database after making a change then I'm good to go. Also, this solution doesn't require you to have an account on someone else's server space like LastPass, and heck, you don't even have to use Dropbox if you don't want to as long as you sync via iTunes. The nice thing is that if you at first only use this to keep secure notes and information on the iPhone itself, you can later expand that to also include the PC as well. So, there is a bit of flexibility. Lastly, the KeePass app and the encryption it uses is open source, so this means no secrets on how it's done. This means it can be verified by people who know how, that it doesn't have back doors. I hope this message will help some people out. -- Raul A. Gallegos "You know, somebody actually complimented me on my driving today. They left a little note on the windscreen, it said 'Parking Fine.'" - Tommy Cooper Home Page: http://raulgallegos.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/rau47 Facebook: http://facebook.com/rau47 On 11/7/2012 8:39 AM, Eric wrote: >> Raul, you are right on with what I want to accomplish. I would like to have a list of my passwords and usernames. > > Yesterday I took a look at key pass, which you had recommended. Although it looks like it may do what I want, I have no idea how to make it work. It really looks as though it was written for users far more knowledgeable than me. > > I just simply want to have a copy of usernames and passwords wherever I happen to need them, on the iPhone or PC, et cetera. > > I am currently using the keeper program on the iPhone. I sure agree with you that they spam their users. However, that program does not seem to work on windows XP and JAWS,. On my PC, I am using a simple little database program called pass keeper this means that every time I add an account or change any information I have to remember to do it in both places. > > Thanks for any additional information. I did not look at the many pass, but maybe it is written for us basic kind of users. > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the "VIPhone" Google Group. To search the VIPhone public archive, visit http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/viphone?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the "VIPhone" Google Group. To search the VIPhone public archive, visit http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/viphone?hl=en.
