I’ve been a long time fan of Roboform in fact I often recommended it to just about anyone I could tell about it. For those of you who don’t know both Roboform and Keepass are form fillers and password savers; they both save your user name and passwords in addition to your name, address, etc. Just one click with Roboform and it fills in your user name and password to log on to sites and another click fills in your name and address information when placing orders. For anyone who spends any amount of time online a form filler is a major time saver not to mention great for security as you can set random passwords and have the program remember them for you.
Now a little back story, I’d been becoming more and more frustrated with Roboform as I’ve bought more than a few licenses over the years but just last year when I bought a new laptop and desktop within a month of each other I bought two more licenses and started using them. Which is all fine and dandy until you reinstall Windows a few times and Roboform won’t activate which means with over 200 passcards stored I couldn’t use any of them. I’d have to email support and beg them for more activations, which they always obliged but it was still an unnecessary headache in my opinion.
For this reason when Foxmarks (now xMarks) started offering secure password sync along with it’s awesome bookmark sync’ing capabilities I started letting Firefox save all my IDs and passwords little by little.
Fast forward a little bit and I’m reading on Lifehacker about using Keepass and Dropbox as the ultimate password sync tool. As some of you know I use several computers and with those computers I often dual boot, so keeping all my passwords in sync is a great idea not to mention Roboform only works on Windows and with my new Mac plus me dual booting Linux on my other machines Roboform isn’t much help in that area.
Long story short, I decided to dive in the only problem is that there isn’t a direct Roboform to Keepass conversion path. I found one how to on lifehacker but it didn’t convert half my user IDs which was troubling a little Googling found this more involved python script that went off with out a hitch: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=7023471 .
Now that I’ve been using Keepass for a month or so now I really don’t miss anything about Roboform. Probably my biggest ‘loss’ in switching is that there’s no toolbar in Firefox or IE to fill and submit as there is with Roboform. However the gains are much more, I now have my passwords stored safely but available from any operating system and in conjunction with Dropbox my passwords are constantly synced and updated whenever I turn on my computer. You just cannot beat that.
The only thing I noticed that wasn’t immediately apparent is when you’re using Keepass on Linux and Mac in addition to Windows you’re going to want to download the ‘classic’ (1.x branch) of Keepass for Windows so the database is saved in the same format across machines.
I, too, have — until more-or-less recently loved Roboform. Its convenience (when things work) is great. Microsoft Word of password management in a (good) way.
But there’s the other way and side, too, as Dan well notes that deserves highlighting.
I, too, have asked the RoboForm folks for additional activations a few times. And they have always provided. But the last three times that I’ve changed my main Roboform location (first to an external pocket-sized hard drive, then to a new computer, and most recently back to a memorycard – 16GB microSD is quite nice) I’ve really started to have enough. .. It’s wearing on the convenience in an unconfortable way + there’s always the thought in the back of my mind saying: What if they stop being nice?
And that’s the problem and dilemma of proprietary software and services. You’re _always_ at the mercy of the provider. Things may go well most of the time — but that they that they don’t…
Proprietary systems have you as a hostage, essentially.
I’ve also migrated (just today) to KeePass and use it with Dropbox as suggested. This is _great_. Especially since KeePass is able to import the “printed” HTML list from Roboform.
Thank you Ommara and Jaakko for stopping by.
I really did like Roboform but more and more having my data stuck in a proprietary format bothered me. Roboform was really the only Window’s program holding me back from be platform agnostic, which in today’s day and age is really good to be. Most programs I use on a daily basis are open source and have ports for Windows, Linux, and OS X. KeePass seemed like the right choice and it turns out it was.
mmm never really used it incase some trojan got in a system then its well what can I say
i’ll look at keepass and see what its all about first before I use it…
thanks Dan
Well with KeePass the database is encrypted, unless the trojan specifically targets KeePass and sniffs out your master password there aren’t going to be any problems.
LOL – Ommara is a joke; all he is doing is trying to make a buck (or $17, as the case may be) off of some “report” that he supposedly thinks will save people all sorts of time. So, he put his comment here to drive people to his website, not because he cares about your post, per se…
Thanks Jason I normally catch crap like that. I’ve removed his comment.
Just to clarify, you ran into issues using professional keepass?
I’ve had no issues using KeePass.
Great logic Dan! I’m glad I found this blog post, because I love KeePass and the only thing that annoyed me was that it wasn’t syncing with all my computers without manually using a thumb drive every time. It can be quite tedious, especially when I’m adding passwords on different computers randomly.
I’ve been using Mozy, but that’s not as convenient or as user-friendly as Dropbox is. It also takes forever to back anything up on. Mozy still has a better price however, $5/month for unlimited storage rather than $20/month for 100 gb cap. It seems like the best deal, not ideal situation is to use Mozy for backing up all your files and Dropbox only on the stuff that needs to be synced. In addition, refer many people to Dropbox so you get extra space for free!
Anyway, thanks for info.
Andy Forsberg
Hi Andy,
You can get 2 GB of Dropbox storage for free. That’s I’ve been using for the past month or so, works great when jumping between computers.
Thanks for stopping by.
-Dan
if you can trust keepass + dropbox, why not opt for lastpass? it has every thing that keepass + dropbox or roboform and more… for free..!
Only concern is the security
Pinky, lastpass is still propritary, thus you can’t verify the security, and thus are no better than roboform.
Roboform now syncs online. Nice handy tool if you use multiple computers. But on the downside, I’m unable to re-activate my copy of it which is why I found your website.
Hi Nicholas, thanks for stopping by. I didn’t realize that Roboform now syncs online. My biggest beef with Roboform is that it only works with relatively few browsers and only on Windows. If one day you decide to switch to a Mac or Linux you have to start with your passwords all over again.
As I linked in my original post Lifehacker has a nice write up on using Keepass and Dropbox to keep passwords in sync across all your computers. http://lifehacker.com/5063176/how-to-use-dropbox-as-the-ultimate-password-syncer
I’m in the process of dropping RoboForm as well. But mainly because it’s a convoluted application, even though I’ve loved it. There is a plugin toolbar for Keepass, but I couldn’t get it to work with IE8 and Windows 7. the install said the toolbar was incompatable with the OS or the browser.
Hey Dan,
Good post thanks for the heads up. I use Roboform a lot and haven’t had any problems YET. Based on your post though Iwill take some measures to make sure I am protected before I reinstall or upgrade my OS.
Hey Dan,
I have tossed around the idea of moving away from Roboform. However, the one thing Roboform offers that I’m not sure how to implement with KeePass is the equivalent of the Roboform Online website. If I am somewhere and need a password, and do not have my thumbdrive with me or I do not want to “alarm” anyone by plugging in a thumb drive to their computer and running an application, I can still fallback to logging into Roboform Online through a web browser and getting the password I need. Any ideas if there’s anything like this for keepass?
Additionally I can use Roboform on my Android phone(which is supported through the Roboform website and bookmarklets app). DropBox and KeePass have android versions, I just wonder if I’ll get them to play as nicely together as they do on a desktop machine.
I’m not quite sure about using Keepass on a computer other then your own. My only idea here is that there is a portable version from the Keepass site. I’ve never used it though. Aside from that there is no comparable online service like there is with Roboform. If your really geeky and security conscious you might want to create a persistent Ubuntu install on a thumb drive with Keepass and your database installed on it. This way you can boot from that and not need to worry about any viruses/keyloggers on the computer you’re using.
Google turned up this for Keepass on the Android: http://www.androlib.com/android.application.com-android-keepass-qtw.aspx . I don’t have a Droid device so I cannot test but Google around for reviews and you should be okay. I’m satisfied with iKeepass on my iPod touch although it’s a bit of a headache to get a new database loaded. You should be okay on Android though as the device is a lot more open and you probably share files between apps. If you can load the database on your phone you won’t have to worry about the online aspect of Roboform from computers other then your own since you can just view the password on your phone and type it in.
If you do move along to Keepass remember to use the older (1.x .kbd) database for maximum comparability. Keypass 2.0 (.kbdx) databases seem to only be supported on Windows. I use the kbd files just fine, in fact I’m not sure what the .kbdx database offers or can offer over the first version.
Good point regarding loggers. They would actually have to log the clipboard, but it is definitely something to be aware of.
There are indeed Keepass portable apps for thumb drives(http://portableapps.com/apps/utilities/keepass_portable is one example), and Keepass for android. There is also a Dropbox client for Android.
Right now I use Roboform2Go on my thumbdrive, but I don’t like to run it on other people’s computers because the whole process of plugging in a thumb drive, running an executable, and on top of that if they have to themselves log into something it starts asking about saving passwords… well any part of that process can be alarming to someone. The might not say anything, but if they are suspicious, and then later they happen to get an account stolen/hacked then they might blame me. So I avoid using the portable app on other’s computers.
Additionally, sometimes I am without my thumbdrive.
So in these two situations I used the roboform online website as the backup plan.
I suppose now that I have an Android phone, it can be my new backup plan, and I will simply use dropbox and keepass for android. I will test these out together after I get my passwords migrated over and followup on how well they work on android. Maybe a week or two from now.
I actually anticipate the experience with Dropbox/Keepass on Android being better than RoboForm on Android, because it seems Roboform on android doesn’t sync the login database to the phone. Instead you actually login to the Roboform online website and javascript bookmarklets do the job of form filling. This means if I am at someone else’s computer, but do not have cellular/wifi service, then I can’t access my Roboform passwords. So I think in this scenario Keepass will actually be better as it will have the database stored locally.
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