Craig Crossman photo Craig Crossman
National Newspaper Computer Columnist

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AUTOMATED FORM FILLING DOES PASSWORDS AND MORE

You're surfing the net at blazing speeds, gathering information, locating products and services, buying and selling, rocking and rolling and all of a sudden it all comes to a screeching halt. You've just surfed into... The Form Page Zone.

Those seemingly endless fill-in-the-form pages asking you type in the same information about yourself over and over can really ruin your surfing day. Before you can proceed, they make you stop and type in your first name, then your last name, then your address, then your Zip Code and on and on it goes until it drives you insane. Pages that ask you to fill in repetitive personal data eat into your precious online time. They stop you from being the master of your own virtual universe and turn you into a mindless robot that has nothing to do but fill in the forms.

Granted that today's modern browsers offer some kind of automation when it comes to filling in forms. But even the best of them can only perform some of the most rudimentary fill-in-the-form processing. What you need is a utility that has been specifically designed from the ground up to manages and process all of your online forms so that you're ready to fill in just about any kind of form the Internet can throw at you, including all of your passwords. Let's face it. After you've created a few passwords, you tend to forget what they are unless you use the same one everywhere you go, which is really a very bad thing to do. And writing down your passwords can be just as risky.

Enter in RoboForm. The aptly-named utility does exactly what it says it will do. RoboForm will automatically fill in any form it comes across, typing the correct information within the proper field in any form page you access. RoboForm remembers relevant data when you visit a website for the first time so when you visit it again, the data will automatically be filled in. And for many first-time accessed pages, RoboForm can still accurately determine much of what goes into which field based upon what each individual field in a form is asking. You can speed up online shopping, job searches, sweepstakes entries and so much more. But what if you need to do all of this on someone else's computer? Siber Systems, the publishers of RoboForm has got you covered there as well with their RoboForm Portable or Pass2Go.

Using an ordinary USB Flash Drive, all of your sensitive data including all of your online passwords are encrypted and stored within one of these devices. Normally a Flash Drive plugs into an available USB port and acts like a small hard drive. But with Pass2Go, the Flash Drive acts more like a key. Just plug it into any computer's USB port and all of your RoboForm data is instantly transferred to that computer's Internet browser. So now when you surf to a form page, everything about you is instantly entered into the corresponding fields. This includes all of your personal information including items such as your name, credit card numbers and passwords. And when you are finished using that computer, all you need do is remove the Flash Drive from the USB port. Once done, not one single item about you will remain on the computer. All of your personal data, passwords and identities are instantly removed and surfing over to any forms page will leave it totally uncompleted. Pass2Go gives you complete security, absolute portability and the very same automation that you'll become used to when surfing on your own personal computer using RoboForm.

I'm still amazed on how accurately RoboForm does its job. Sometimes I'll come across a website form so convoluted that I'll think that no way will it do an accurate job. So far, that hasn't happened. If there is any ambiguity, RoboForm gives me the opportunity to clarify. And the next time I come back, it's got the entry down rock-solid.

If having to fill in form page after form page makes you feel like an automaton doing the same things over and over again, then you'll quickly discover how much better it is having automated form-filling utilities such as RoboForm and Pass2Go. Free 30-day unlimited trial versions are available for download. See the website for pricing information and site licenses.

Now you can let your PC be all the robot you never wanted to be.

www.pass2go.com

Craig Crossman is a McClatchy-Tribune newspaper columnist writing about computers and technology. He also hosts the nation's longest running nationally syndicated radio talk show on computers and technology, Computer America, heard on both the Business TalkRadio Network® and the Lifestyle TalkRadio Network®, weeknights at 10PM Eastern time.  Visit his website at http://www.computeramerica.com

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