We’ve all been there: It’s 11pm and you’ve just remembered you need to
pay a bill online.  Tired and frustrated, you open up the laptop
and fire up a browser. You find the company’s website in your bookmarks
and go to their login page and…

Why didn’t your login data auto-populate for you? Did you accidentally
delete them when clearing your private data last week?

Ugh…

After rustling through a stack of old mail, you find the paper bill
with your account ID – you’re halfway there.  Now you have to try
to use the old noggin to remember the password. After your third
attempt at an impossible 8 digit minimum letters and numbers with a
special character required password, you are locked out of the website.
The notification says, “Your account has been locked due to 3 failed
login attempts, please click this link or call this number to
reset/unlock”.

You are really fuming now. The inconvenience of calling a CS
Representative is out of the question (you’ve been there before and
really don’t feel like kicking the dog again), so you go through the
mundane, thoroughly invasive task of resetting your password.

You click the link and enter your email address. You go to your email
and click the reset password link. At long last, you are able to reset
your password, but not before entering in the last four digits of your
social security number, correctly answering a ‘what is your mother’s
maiden name?’ type question, and naming all the state capitols in
reverse alphabetical order while rubbing your stomach and patting your
head.

Finally! You’ve done it! You’re the man!

It’s 12 o’clock…

Ok, so maybe I exaggerated a little bit. Remembering website logins
isn’t always this time consuming and annoying. Also, I don’t advocate
dog kicking.

On the other hand, this scenario could be worse. What would happen if
you were forced to call a CS Rep. and they were unavailable or you
couldn’t successfully answer your security question? More times than
not, a late payment would happen.

Billeo has the solution for you with our Passwords feature. It’s very
simple yet intuitive. You can easily save a password and on your next
visit to the site it will automatically fill in. If you need to
view/edit/delete your passwords, you can easily do so by clicking a
button.  You can save multiple passwords for a single domain and
assign them unique nicknames for easy access. If a secure site has a
username on one page and a password on another, Billeo will save and
populate both without a hitch. Billeo’s Password Manager will even give
you the option to automatically submit your filled password directly
into the website so you will be logged right in.

Of course, this feature means nothing without security. Billeo encrypts
all of your stored passwords in a file that is located on your local
hard drive. ‘The Vault’ as we like to call it, is encrypted using
industry standard 128 Bit AES encryption. This data is yours and Billeo
does not have access to it.

Additionally, you can heighten the security of your passwords by
enabling or disabling some key toolbar settings. Personally, I disable
the automatic sign in feature for my toolbar so I know that I will have
to log in access my information. I also backup my Vault on a USB thumb
drive so I have a copy of my stored passwords in case of a hard drive
crash or if my laptop is lost or stolen. If you have multiple computers and would like to securely sync your passwords between two or
more computers/toolbars, I would recommend trying Dropbox.

I hope you try out our Password Manager feature after reading this
blog. If you already have Billeo, hopefully you learned something new.
As always, feel free to email us at support@billeo.com for any
questions or assistance on using this great feature.

One of the challenges we face at Billeo is properly supporting consumers who use our toolbar on multiple computers.

‘How to access passwords from multiple computers and keep them synced up?’

Let’s take my situation as an example. I regularly use my one Billeo account on three separate computers (office pc, home pc, and Macbook). It is easy enough for me to use a flash drive or online storage solution, a la Mozy, Carbonite, or IDrive, to back up my office pc to my home pc or my Macbook.

The problem is changes I make to Billeo on one computer do not carry over to the other two. If I’m using multiple computers regularly their respective Billeo vaults grow separately. While each computer will have the Billeo stored logins for, say, T-Mobile, Amazon, and Facebook, one or two of the three (but not all!) may have my PayPal or Netflix or Zappos.

When you have two or more computers, all with Billeo installed, all with unique logins stored, how do you decide which vault is your primary? How do you keep Billeo synced across all your computers?

An application called Dropbox may have the solution. With a Dropbox account, files I save in a specific folder on one computer are instantly updated and available in corresponding folders on the other computers I use.

This is an imminently useful tool and Dropbox knows it. Like other companies in their niche, they’re betting the free accounts (2GB) they offer will hook consumers who will eventually pony up for more space. It’s a good bet.

A Billeo vault at less than 100KB is only a drop in the 2GB bucket…yet, I can already feel the urge to upgrade my Dropbox account.

In the meantime, straight from the Billeo Cookbook, here is our recipe for Billeo with a side of Dropbox.

1. Download Dropbox (http://www.getdropbox.com/) onto one of your computers
2. Install it (thereby creating a Dropbox folder on your pc/Mac) and sign up for a free 2GB Dropbox account
3. Backup your Billeo vault to the new Dropbox folder (Click here for help backing up your vault)
4. Sign out of Billeo
5. Click Sign In on the Billeo toolbar to bring up the Sign In box
6. Click Options in the Sign In box and then the button with the ellipses (…)
7. Point to your saved Vault within the Dropbox and sign in

Now any new login data should save to the Vault you stored in the Dropbox.

For the second computer:

1. Download and install Dropbox to the second computer
2. Sign in to the Dropbox account you created earlier–it should immediately sync your saved data from your first computer to this one
3. Click Sign In on the Billeo toolbar to bring up the Sign In box
4. Click Options and then the ellipses again
5. Within your Dropbox folder you should see your saved Vault from the first computer. Point to it and Sign In.

You should have all the saved data from the first Vault. Any new logins  you record will save to the Vault within Dropbox, which will automatically sync to the folder on the first computer. When you sign back in to Billeo on the first computer any changes made while on the second computer should be reflected in your Vault.

One lesson I learned early on: Do Not Try to save logins to one Billeo account from two or more locations simultaneously (i.e. don’t let someone at another location use your Billeo account while you are using it). It just won’t work effectively.

Also, when you sit down at your computer, sign out then back into Billeo to ensure yourself you are accessing the most recent data.

A number of Billeo users have already begun syncing their vaults through Dropbox and all the feedback has been positive. If you’ve been using Billeo on more than one computer you really must give this recipe a try.

If you encounter any roadblocks in setting up Dropbox, or, if you’re just not comfortable implementing these steps on your own, feel free to reach out to me or one of my colleagues in Billeo Support (support@billeo.com /866-539-0782).