Mobile Password Tracking: eWallet

Posted on January 23, 2008 4 Comments

Early last week I was pondering the notion of running a password keeper on my Windows Mobile phone. Even better, I was hoping for something that could sync to a desktop app as well. Oh, and I wanted it to be free and come with daily back-rubs for life. If you’re gonna dream…

Matt suggested SplashID and I recalled that I used to use eWallet many years ago. Both appear to fit the need with a mobile and desktop client and cost about the same. I also looked around for free/open source options as well, but had little luck in that arena (I’m still open to ideas here).

Short Version

I’m trying eWallet. So far it makes me happy.

Longer Version

Two days ago I received email from the eWallet folks at Ilium with an upgrade offer to their new version 6 — almost half off, in fact. That just about makes the decision for me! That’s also a heck of an upgrade deal. I can’t recall when I purchased my last version of eWallet.

I’m running the 30 day trial and quite happy so far. In general it is a lot like I remembered. Plus there are some interesting enhancements over previous versions that I like a lot.

For instance, one of the new (at least to me) features is the ability to sync. With the old version I used, you would sync one “wallet” or data file file back and forth via the wonders of ActiveSync.

Now, things work a bit differently. The desktop client can sync (bi-directional or either of the one-way options) to the mobile device whenever the mobile device is connected to the desktop. But they keep separate wallets. In fact, when I set up the sync, the mobile client moved the wallet out of the sync folder and I no longer have to worry about having one wallet syncing back and forth. That means not worrying about losing my one and only copy too.

The desktop client also syncs to FTP/SFTP servers. How sweet is that? I click a button and I have a backup copy securely stored on my FTP server. It also handles network shares Iomega’s iStorage (of which I’m not familiar):

eWallet Sync Options

I can also add and encrypt data files straight into the wallet. Kind of handy when the licensing info for a software package is on a pdf — just dump in the entire PDF and move on.

There’s a beta going of something called eWallet Web companion that I’m looking at. It appears that the desktop client can transfer my wallet to Ilium and they then make it available via a secure web front-end. No, I don’t think I’d experiment with my main wallet (!) but it sure is a great concept and I hope it proves to be secure and safe. I’ll likely apply to the beta to have a look — being able to [securely] get at my wallet from any browser has some appeal.

Tags: eWallet, mobile, passwords, security, windows-mobile