There are only a few apps we’d want to take with us on a desert island, but one of them is 1Password, the acclaimed cross-platform login and password manager for desktop and mobile devices. Now, security expert Norton has decided to challenge the best with its new Identity Safe.
Norton has quietly released Identity Safe, “a password manager that makes logging into your favorite websites easier, faster and more secure.” If that sounds familiar, then you’re probably already using 1Password, which has pretty much ruled the roost for this kind of purpose.
Norton Identity Safe is made up of several parts: A Mac or PC desktop client tied to your Norton account, iOS or Android mobile clients and Safari, Chrome, Firefox or Internet Explorer (that last one is PC-only, naturally) browsers that can access your data. Much like 1Password, the service promises that you’ll “never again forget a user name or password” and can “stop filling in the same forms over and over.”
One huge advantage Norton Identity Safe has over 1Password right now is that it’s absolutely free -- the company is giving the software away free of charge, forever, with no strings attached, until October 1, 2012.
You’ll want to sign into (or create) a free Norton account online prior to installing the software -- even though we had one, the Mac App Store version refused to let us sign in until we did. After a password reset we were good to go, but the next hurdle came with creating a new vault password that required at least one number, one symbol and one capital letter -- oh, and at least eight digits. (Good luck remembering that one, folks -- we’ll be saving ours in 1Password.)
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