Review: SplashID
As your mother always told you, using one password for all of your online accounts is a bad idea. Keeping multiple passwords for all of your various accounts is one of the best bets for online security, but remembering all of them can be challenge in and of itself. One solution is to keep them all written down and with you in your wallet or written on sticky notes and posted in various places, but that’s probably a bad idea too. For some, the only way to make managing that plethora of passwords and other pertinent account info work is if they can keep all of them strongly encrypted with one robust password that you can remember and on a device you have with you nearly all the time. Enter SplashID ($7.99 In the App Catalog), an application that allows you to keep all of your passwords in one, (hopefully) secure spot.
Installation and setup
Installation is straightforward: hit the App Catalog, search for SplashID, tap download, and you’re ready to go. From the initial launch screen, you’re presented with a short tutorial on how to use the app. To add an account, there’s a persistent “+” button in the main account scene that allows for the creation of an account. The familiar side-swipe gesture deletes accounts in this view, and one welcome addition here would be a modal notification asking for confirmation that you’d actually like to delete an account. While I didn’t accidently delete one during my testing, I can see how one could easily swipe away the 5 minutes of data entry some of the accounts require – it’s every bit as easy to delete accounts here as it is email in the email client.
Once in the account creation scene, the steps necessary to proceed aren’t immediately apparent: the requisite account type modifiers reside in drop-down lists that live in the upper left and right of the screen and are marked as “unfiled”, which isn’t a huge deal after you’ve learned what lives behind those non-descript buttons, but it represents a lack of UI polish that is thematic throughout the app. This theme continues to filters that can be applied in the account list view; two buttons residing in the top of the scene produce drop-down menus that allow you to sort by the account type (such as “insurance” or “bank”) that are set while creating an account, but the back gesture doesn’t turn off the filter, instead you have to manually go back to the account picker and reset it to “all”.
Also on the setup front, I did have program crash on me while adding accounts, albeit on very rare occasions. After typing “save” I would be greeted with a blank screen, with the back gesture only minimizing the application and the main drop-down menu being unresponsive.
Features and Use
Outside of those UI annoyances, SplashID is generally solid. The main scene lists of all of your accounts which can be searched by typing letters on the keyboard, and as mentioned above, you can sort the list by account type. One of the features you’ll immediately notice is how program will automatically lock after a user selectable amount of time (with the default being 1 minute), prompting you to re-enter your password – handy if you’re using a computer in a public place and put your phone down for a few moments without locking the screen. To make things more secure when you’re using the app in public spots, you can also toggle a password and PIN mask while inside of an account to obscure sensitive information but look at other details.
Now, I’m not a cryptography expert nor am I well versed in the intricacies of webOS security, so I can’t speak to how secure your data will actually be if your phone falls into the hands of the unscrupulous, but SplashID developer SplashData’s website states that the company employs 256-bit BlowFish encryption to secure your data – a number of bits and the name of an encryption algorithm that sound good enough to allow me to sleep soundly at night. And if ever you get cold feet, there’s always the option to securely erase all of the data in the program via the menu.
Topping everything off is the ability to securely backup and restore your data so you can perform periodic backups so in the event that your phone does get lost, stolen, or damaged, you don’t have to start from scratch and reenter all of your account info. So far as I know, SplashID is the only program in this category in the App Catalog to employ this feature.
Summary
Sure, Splash ID could use some UI polish (that, combined with the occasional but alarming performance oddities bring the rating down 1 and ½ stars), but it ultimately does a great job at what it was designed to be –a keeper of account information to keep the forgetful amongst us safer in the online world by enabling us to use a unique, complex password for each and every account we possess. Combine that with the unique backup and restore functionality, and you have an app that’s hard to pass up.
