A constant in modern life and work is logging into things (online banking, Amazon, work computer), and the need to store, create new, reset, and remember passwords and usernames.
Some people approach this insecurely, by writing them down, or storing them in spreadsheets or Word docs. Even a password protected spreadsheet or Word doc provides insufficient security. (Did you know you can copy and resave an Excel spreadsheet as a .zip, and then extract sheet passwords from that?)
Other security-deficient convenience methods for password management include:
- the repetition of stems in passwords across multiple logins (Arsenal1956 for your Amazon, Ar5enal1956! for Facebook etc)
- the choice of predicatable 4-digit pins on banking apps or debit cards (1234, 4321 or 2580 (straight down the middle)).
Online password management sites and software purport to solve this problem. But they have their own drawbacks:
- Prone to hacking (LastPass 2023)
- Remote and overly-technical feel (people are instrinsically uncomfortable with auto-populating their login details in browsers, and value the feeling of control obtained from typing in passwords manually).
- No insight into the security of individual passwords, or the the security of a user's digital footrpint as a whole based on how often the same passwords are repeated.
As such there is a gap in the market for a reliable, uncomplicated to use, but functionality and insight-rich password manager that solves the security concerns described above.
A password vault in a OneNote notebook solves this for Windows users:
- OneNote notebooks and sections can be locked with passwords and not converted to .ZIP to reveal the password, like spreadsheets.
- A user's OneNote notes are protected by their OneDrive and PC security.
- OneNote is searchable and simple to use.
PinPoint is a PIN and Password manager for OneNote users to help them maintain their important passwords and usernames as a searchable, sortable table in a single OneNote page, to which they can add new passwords (self-chosen or randomly generated by PinPoint), and to help them monotor the security of the passwords they choose as individual logins, and as a corpus of logins.
This is a v1 .NET Framework app written in C# with a WPF GUI that is designed to help a user save their most important PINs and passwords as a locked OneNote section, and do additionals such as:
- Read the PINs and Passwords of an existing OneNote Section created by this app, so that they can add, edit and delete from their password section and publish updates back to OneNote.
- Run a report on the individual strength of passwords and PINs based on suitable algorithms of password strength (eg. Hyve's days to crack passwords based on length and character complexity)
- Run a report on the collective strength of the PINs and passwords of the sections as a whole, based on how frequently the same password or stem of the same password appears.
- Import a list of passwords as CSV with mappable columns to the interface for onward publish to OneNote.
- Auto-generate a secure alphanumeric password or strong six or four-digit PIN.