PasswordMaker 1.5.1 review

PasswordMaker project is a small, lightweight, free, extension for Internet Explorer, Firefox, Mozilla, Netscape, Flock, and Yahoo! W

License: GPL (GNU General Public License) File size: 158K Developer: LeahScape, Inc.

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PasswordMaker project is a small, lightweight, free, extension for Internet Explorer, Firefox, Mozilla, Netscape, Flock, and Yahoo! Widgets which creates unique, secure passwords that are very easy for you to retrieve but no one else. Nothing is stored anywhere, anytime, so there's nothing to be hacked, lost, or stolen.

How It Works:
You provide PasswordMaker two pieces of information: a "master password" -- that one, single password you like -- and the URL of the website requiring a password. Through the magic of one-way hash algorithms, PasswordMaker calculates a message digest, also known as a digital fingerprint, which can be used as your password for the website.

Although one-way hash algorithms have a number of interesting characteristics, the one capitalized by PasswordMaker is that the resulting fingerprint (password) does "not reveal anything about the input that was used to generate it." In other words, if someone has one or more of your generated passwords, it is computationally infeasible for him to derive your master password or to calculate your other passwords. Computationally infeasible means even computers like this won't help!

Requirements:
Firefox 0.7 - 1.5.0.* ALL

What's New in This Release:
Fixed auto-population of "Other Fields" bug discussed here (introduced in version 1.5).
Fixed CoolKey and "Populate With PasswordMaker" bugs discussed here and here, introduced in version 1.5.
Fixed missing eraser image ("Clear Master Password"), introduced in version 1.5.
Fixed username population bug when "Show all passwords on web page as clear text" is enabled. When enabled, password fields were not always recognized as password fields (introduced in version 1.5).
Made Account-Specific Settings dialog always-on-top so use of the Auto-Populate tab is easier. Requested here.
When creating a new account, "When URL Contains" and "Use This URL" are now pre-populated with the current URL based on the same URL components in Default Settings instead of just the entire current URL. Requested here.
Renamed "Populate With PasswordMaker" menuitem to "Populate This Field" and "PasswordMaker CoolKey" menuitem to "CoolKey" per this post.
Fixed a bug which permitted the defaults ("default account") to be dragged-and-dropped into a folder. Placing the defaults into a folder prevents new accounts from being created, and there is no way to move the default account out of the folder without manually editing passwordmaker.rdf.