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Passwords have long been the bane of computer users — they need to be unique, memorable, not too easy to guess, and are best constructed from a mix of numbers, symbols and different-case letters. The obvious problem here is that “memorable” and “9F9^k79}UzxtZo#B” really don’t go together, particular when that’s just one of a dozen passwords in use.
Desktop web browsers can save passwords, of course, but these can be accessed if you haven’t secured your Windows user account itself with a secure password. It’s also no good if you want to access your saved passwords from a smartphone. That’s where a third-party password manager comes in, and while there are already plenty to choose from, Trend Micro thinks there’s room for one more.
Trend Micro DirectPass 1.0 costs £10 a year and can be installed on any number of Windows PCs. It runs both as a standalone program and as a web browser extension, but only Internet Explorer, Firefox and Google Chrome are supported. A compulsory, but free, Trend Micro account is required to complete the installation, which is then used to sync saved data via the cloud to instances of the program running on other PCs or smartphones. A secure DirectPass program password is also required, but, if everything goes according to plan, this should be the only one you’ll then have to remember.
On first run, DirectPass assumes there are passwords to import from a web browser, but doesn’t allow a particular browser to be specified if more than one is installed. The DirectPass browser extension then sits in the background, waiting for a web page with a login form to be opened. When this happens, the extension will offer either to auto-fill the appropriate credentials if they’re already saved, or save the credentials once they’ve been used for a successful log-in.
The DirectPass extension worked as expected with straightforward username and password login combos, and even prompted to update its stored user profile data when a name, address and other personal information was entered on a form. This, along with details for one credit card, can then be used to auto-fill other forms as required. However, DirectPass won’t work with logins spread across two screens, where a password and other security credentials are requested only after a valid username has been entered. This means it’s no use for auto-filling most UK bank login details, for example, although the information can be copied and pasted from a DirectPass secure text note.
DirectPass also detects when a web site used for financial transactions is opened and will prompt to re-open it in its own Secure Browser that, among other things, encrypts keystrokes to foil key-logging software. However, the only UK-useful site it worked with was PayPal, and it didn’t detect any of the major online UK banks’ sites.
The Secure Browser protects against keyloggers, but only works with PayPal in the UK
The way DirectPass saves passwords is also problematic. The program only prompts to auto-fill a login when the page it was originally saved from is opened and not when a login request is made from a different URL — a common enough occurrence with Amazon, for example. Logins can still be selected manually from the saved list, but this is sorted by save date rather than alphabetically and finding one in a random list of 20 or more is a chore. The list can be sorted manually, but doing this with a few dozen passwords imported from a web browser is more tedious still.
With no apparent secure browser support for UK banks and an inability to save multi-layered logins, the fact that DirectPass can also randomly generate secure passwords and store secure notes isn’t much of a selling point — so can the free version of LastPass (www.lastpass.com), which also has more features. LastPass Premium with its comprehensive smartphone support is also cheaper at $12 (around £7.50) per year, so is a better buy.
| Details | |
|---|---|
| Price | £10 |
| Details | www.trendmicro.co.uk |
| Rating | ** |
