As a PC user youprobably keep track of numerous passwords and login details. TheInternet can make this complicated. With the increasing number of socialnetworking websites and online services, it’s really difficult to keeptrack of IDs and passwords. Security is also a major issue when we loginin to web services from multiple machines.  Although most web browsersoffer to remember your login details, it is not advisable or useful onpublic computers. Alternatively, you can use a portable password managerto get rid of such issues.

A portable password manager can reside on your Ontop USB flash drive and act as a password storage program. It can store the login details of multiple websites. When you connect a USB flash drive to a computer with password manager on it, it will autofill the ID and password field and let you login to the website. It also helps you to protect your sensitive information from spyware and keyloggers since you don’t need to key-in your login details.

There are dozens of password manager programs out there. Some of them are free and some are not. I have been using ALPass, a free portable password manager for the past few months and it works really well.

Getting started

The setup file for ALPass is just 5.5MB and you can download it from here. Before you begin the installation of ALPass, connect your Ontop USB flash drive to an empty USB port.

Click twice on the setup file to begin the installation.

Click Next.

Accept the license agreement and click Next.

You can install ALPass either to a computer or to your USB flash drive. As we are going to use ALPass as a portable password manager, select the Install to removable storage (USB) radio button and click Next.

Installing software programs on normal USB flash drives may take longer because of their limited read and write speeds. Ontop USB flash drives with TurboJet technology deliver superior read/write speeds and hence running programs on an Ontop USB flash drive is convenient and reliable.

Hit the Install button.

Wait while ALPass is installed on your USB flash drive.

Click Next.

Click Finish.

ALPass will be launched automatically. Before you proceed further, you need to create a user account (master user). This acts as an administrator account and you must not forget the master password.

Hit the News User button.

Enter an ID, a password, confirm your password, and click the OK button.

Click the Tools menu and select Preferences.

Choose the Browser tab and check the check boxes as you see in the above picture. You can also select the Auto Login (Automatically submit login forms after clicking Auto Fill) checkbox if you want ALPass to directly login to websites.

Click Apply > OK to save changes.

Adding websites

There are two ways to add website login info to ALPass. You can either do it manually or when you visit a website for the first time after installing ALPass, ALPass will automatically popup and ask if you want it to add the site that you just logged into.

To add a site’s info manually:

Click the Add toolbar icon and select Add Site…

Enter the website URL, Site Keyword, Title, User ID, Password and select a Folder to store the information. Follow the above two steps to add more websites. Click the OK button to save the information.

Using the password manager

Once you are done with adding required websites information, you are now ready to use your USB flash drive on any machine. To make use of the portable password manager, just follow these steps:

Plug the USB flash drive in and navigate to I:\ALPass\ALPass.exe. (Here the I is the drive letter of my USB flash drive).

Double click the ALPass.exe.

Enter the Login details and click OK.

Select the website you want to visit and hit the green arrow button to visit the site.

Select the website and click the Fill button to auto fill the login details to that site.

Just click the Sign In button to get into the site.

Using a portable password manager like ALPass has many advantages. It’s secure and very easy to use and is an excellent addition to your Ontop USB flash drive.