I recently heard from a friend of mine that he had a horrible experience reinstalling windows recently. His computer was running slow, and he wanted to erase it all and start over from scratch. Someone had told him about some elite hacker program that securely erases your computer and he couldn’t wait to do it so that he could call me and tell me how awesome it was. In hindsight, I bet he wishes he would have known I was completely familiar with DBAN already.

Unfortunately for my friend, the person who told him about the program neglected to mention that it would erase every hard drive connected to the computer. I bet you all just gasped, for good reason too. As most of you already guessed, when he ran the program he still had his external usb drive connected which contained his one and only “secure” backup.

At this point, he’s lost everything on his computer, including the backup he just finished making. In addition to the obvious losses of priceless photos, and other personal documents, this person had managed to rack up user accounts on hundreds of websites. He foolishly saved all this vital information, in a text document hidden away where he thought it was safe (which, it wasn’t, but thats another story). That text file is now gone, and he has a LOT of work ahead of him

You’re probably thinking, wow, it would be awful if that happened to me, but I bet it would be a whole lot worse than you’re even imagining. Losing that one file is pretty much the same thing as losing your wallet, so let’s play a game. Get out a piece of paper, and write down everything that you carry in your wallet/purse, and who you would have to contact to replace each one. When you’re sure you’ve got it all, check your wallet. I’ll wait…

…

…

Ok, so how did you do? If you’re like most people the first things on your list were probably credit and debit cards. Somehow they are always on our minds, right? You’re next couple items might be your drivers license, and maybe a membership card or two… after that I bet everything got a bit fuzzy, right?. You start asking yourself questions like, did I have a discount card to AMC or Regal? CVS or Walgreens? Who do I call to get a new birth certificate? Will they need my drivers license before they give me my birth certificate? Will I need my birth certificate to get my drivers license? I’m sure you get the idea… It get’s messy quick!

The same thing happens with your online accounts… you always remember a few basics, like who your email provider is (gmail, hotmail, yahoo); what portal do you use as your home page (google, yahoo, msn); your favorite social networking site is (facebook, twitter, myspace); you might even get a few more. However, once you get past 5-10 sites, you start forgetting them completely. You ask yourself things like “when I had a problem with my car last year I found a forum that really helped and seemed very well informed, but what was the name” or, “My ex’s friend told me about this really cool site, but we don’t talk since the breakup… what was it called?” That is all forgetting the obvious fact that most people don’t even remember their login data if they manage to GET to the website they want.

So, what’s the solution? Well, Roboform itself is a great start. It remembers all your passwords securely… but it only goes so far if you wipe your hard drive like my friend did. SiberSystems makes another product, GoodSync, that works perfectly in this situation. GoodSync will backup sections of your hard drive to other locations that you choose. Most of the time this would be to an external drive. However, when you lose your main copy, AND the backup simultaniously… this STILL doesn’t help you, by itself.

What I neglected to mention, is that when you combine the two products, you can instead backup to RoboForm’s online backup service– FOR FREE! That way, if my friend ever suffers another a catastrophic loss… he will rest soundly with the knowledge that his login data will be safe. It also serves the dual purpose of easing multiple roboform installations. Mine is set up to automatically sync up login data between my desktop, laptop, and my android phone instantly over the internet. That way I always have the information I need on the go. Depending on what information you store, it might just help you with that wallet problem as well!

For instance, you might check out a clothing store for your wife, a tool store for your husband, a toy store for your kids, an antique store for your parents, and an electronics store for your geek. Chances are, you probably will not frequent ALL of these sites for yourself, outside of the holidays. Because of that, most of these sites will not have your shipping address and credit card information saved.

Your probably thinking, who cares? You can just set up a new account, or make a one time buy with no account (available at some stores). However, you still have to enter all the ridiculous information that online sellers need: name, address, you’ll have to dig through your wallet/purse to find your credit card, then they’ll want to know your mothers maiden name, date of birth, social security number, and galactic interplanetary serial identification construct. OK, OK, maybe its not that bad, but you will undoubtedly waste 5 minutes of your life grilling through their questions; 10 minutes if you are not an expert typer, or not computer savvy.

Those days are now over, because now you have installed roboform. Roboform remembers all this information and more (well… you might have to remember your galactic id # yourself). It (optionally) keeps this information all locked up behind a password, and a secure layer of encryption.

When you go to a website with a long annoying form, you simply click your ‘identity’ button. Then roboform springs to life; using some fairly impressive AI, roboform will detect each field’s type (credit card #, address line 1, etc) and enter the information as needed. Then, you just breeze through making sure it did not miss anything (very rarely) and you’re done.

If you are worried about your secure information (credit cards, bank accounts), they will all be protected by secure AES encryption. However, if you are especially paranoid, roboform does not have ANY required fields. If you don’t feel comfortable entering certain information, just don’t. The time it saves you on whatever information you DO trust it with… will certainly be noticeable.

To top it all off… roboform remembers your login information to every website you have an account on. A simple click of your mouse, or tap of a hotkey will instantly log you into all of your existing banks, forums, and social networking sites.

And now the moment you have been waiting for… the 20%. If you act quickly, you can save 20% on roboform, roboform2go and goodsync from roboform’s website by entering the coupon code NEVR1 during checkout. In case some of you are wondering, they decided to hide the coupon code box if you click the image in the middle of their page. To see the coupon box you need to click "buy rf pro" from the upper navigation.