Preferences

Customize ALPass with preferences to suit your personal style.

Preferences

This is the Preferences dialog where you can customize security levels and how ALPass interacts with your computer.

General

Run ALPass when Windows starts: This starts ALPass whenever your turn on your computer and Windows starts.

Minimize to System Tray on startup: Instead of displaying the main ALPass program, this sends ALPass to the system tray on startup.

Always on top: This causes ALPass to always be displayed on top of every other window, regardless of which one has focus (regardless on which one you are currently using). Other "Always on top" applications, like the Windows Task Manager, will be on top of ALPass when they have focus.

Exit (X) minimizes ALPass to System Tray: The exit button (X) in the upper right corner does not close ALPass. It sends it to the system tray. Similarly, pressing <Alt + F4> also sends ALPass to the system tray. On the menu, File —> Exit, and Exit on the right-click context on the ALPass system tray icon will both close ALPass.

Minimize to System Tray on Auto Fill: After auto-filling the login ID and password for a web site, ALPass minimizes itself to the system tray.

Default URL: If there are no browsers active, this is the default URL for ALPass. You can change it to any web site you like. (Your web mail may be a convenient choice.)

Database location: Specify where you want ALPass to store your encrypted login databases.

Backup database on Exit (Strongly recommended): This backs up and protects your data everytime you exit ALPass. Original encrypted login databases have an *.apw file extension, while backups have an *.apw.bak extension.

NOTE: Preferences apply to users individually, and not as a whole. i.e. Each user can have different preferences. Start up preferences default to the last logged in user.

Browser Integration

Set how you want ALPass to interact with your browser.

Smart Web Address Real-time Monitoring (Strongly recommended): ALPass can automatically detect the web address you are currently at to automatically login. This isn't too important if you only have a few logins, but the more logins you have, the more important this becomes. e.g. If you have 500 logins, do you really want to search through them all? Note: you must enable Smart Web Address Real-time Monitoring for the other automatic browser functions to work.

Auto Popup: Pops up ALPass whenever you hit a login page for a stored web site so that you can quickly login.

Auto Fill: Whenever you visit a login page for a stored site, ALPass can automatically fill in the login fields for you so that you can sign in with 1 click.

Auto Add: If a site is not in your encrypted login database, ALPass will retrieve the information and prompt you to confirm adding it.

Manual Site Keyword Manager: Use this to add or remove keywords for sites that are marked for manual input. ALPass will not use any automatic functions on any site that is on this list.

Hint: Use either Auto Popup or Auto Fill, but not both. There is no point to having ALPass popup if your fields are going to be filled in automatically. The exception is when you have a large number of sites that you want to manually fill in all the details, want to drag and drop logins and passwords, or have multiple logins at the same sites (e.g. Multiple web mail accounts).

Security

Set ALPass security preferences here.

Auto login when ALPass starts: ALPass will automatically log you into ALPass when this is checked. In multiuser environments, ALPass will check the preference for the last user. Users created in other Windows user accounts are not available. For maximum security, disable this.

Mask passwords with asterisks (*): Passwords are replaced with asterisks (*). For maximum security, enable this.

Password prompt for access to sensitive information: This password protects Preferences and other sensitive things like changing passwords. For maximum security, enable this.

Allow drag and drop for login IDs and passwords: This allows you to drag and drop login IDs and passwords directly from ALPass into valid drag and drop targets, like your browser, word processor, or any drag and drop enabled program. For maximum security, disable this.

Auto log out: This will log you out of ALPass after a predetermined period of inactivity on the computer. For maximum security, enable this with a low timeout (e.g. 5 minutes).

CAUTION: Disabling Mask passwords or enabling Allow drag and drop for login IDs and passwords will allow anybody at the computer to view your password in plain text. Most computer users have weak passwords, less than 5 passwords for everything, and usually only 1 or 2 passwords for everything. Allowing someone access to 1 or more of your passwords can compromise many different logins or services. Use with care. (You can press 'Ctrl + Alt + Del' and then press 'k' to lock your computer on Windows 2000 or Windows Key + L on Windows XP. This will force the next person to enter your Windows password to access your computer.)

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