Microsoft Fingerprint Reader and Password Minder
I love my Microsoft Fingerprint Reader, and I use it all the time at home. I also love Keith Brown's Password Minder, it's where I keep all my secret stuff. I also keep the pa ssword file synchronized using FolderShare.
While the software that comes with the Fingerprint Reader will also store passwords, marrying them with your fingerprint, I like the idea of keeping my passwords in the pwd.xml file - it's more mobile and sync's nicely. I use the fingerprint login for a number of sites, but I keep my financial passwords super complex and in the Password Minder.
I never realized - doh! - that the Fingerprint Reader not only managed passwords for Web Sites, but Windows Programs as well.
This makes it twice as useful as I thought it was, and that was pretty useful.
Of course, the next obvious thing was to combine the two, hence the image at right. They work great together. Might seem stupid to use one password secret store to open another, but I thought it was cool. Now maybe I'll put them all on a TrueCrypt drive...mwahahahaha
Now playing: Audrey Niffenegger - The Time Traveler's Wife, Part 1
About Scott
Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.
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Jason Stangroome
You might want to check out axcrypt (http://axcrypt.sourceforge.net). It encrypts anything and uses shell extensions to make use convenient. I keep a text file with all my secrets (numbered swiss bank accounts, nsa bios, etc.). When I open the text file with notepad, it prompts for the key. I make my edits and exit. On exit, it quietly reencrypts.
"The prisoner escaped after cutting off a guards right and and walking through the 27 palm locked doors to the front gate"
Recently I was reading some articles complaining that this MS device is not very secure because you have to rest your finger on the sensor, eventually leaving traces of your fingerprint, as opposed to other sensors that you have to drag your finger over it, smudging any trace. Another article complained that the fingerprint info travels unencrypted from the device to the computer (as if keyboards were much different and more secure than that). It seems MS does not recommend this device for anything really serious, mostly for convenience.
Now, PWM + TrueCrypt, that one great duo that I'm getting more and more addicted to every day. All I needed to do was to come up with a single easy-to-remember-hard-to-break password and share it with my wife. And if you're asking how come I trust my wife that much...well, let's just say TrueCrypt's hidden volumes, takes care of that question (and keeps the wife innocently happy, LOL).
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