FlexWallet Review

July 16, 2003 | | format - Other (ar.) | viewed - 25x
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(31 votes) | category - -

FlexWallet Review

>Information at your stylus tip

FlexWallet is a highly customizable, secure, electronic replacement for your wallet. There is a ton of information that you would like to have available; everything from the credit cards that you carry and their PIN’s to your significant other’s shoe size to the passwords for web sites you don’t visit very often. There are a number of ways you could store this information on your PDA, but not as secure or accessible as what’s available with FlexWallet. This tool offers 128 bit encryption with passwords of any length. It has fully customizable templates to allow you to capture all types of data. It comes with a slew of prepared templates so you can start using it immediately. It can export data to XML format if you need to transfer information to another format. A desktop version is also available so that you can edit & read the same data in the same format on your PC.

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Getting Started

The installation is simple and straight forward. When you first launch the program, it creates a new “wallet.” The wallet is the encrypted file where you’ll store your information. You can create as many wallets as you need. The first wallet immediately prompts you for a password. You’re presented with a neat phone-pad style entry screen. You can enter a number as long as you like. I would prefer, in the interest of security, to be able to mix characters & symbols with numbers (I’m a DBA by trade and quite paranoid because of it), but this is still fairly secure.

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The rest is pretty intuitive. You’re given two folders by default, Personal and Business. You can create more folders. It even offers folders that are not secured when the wallet is locked (my wife’s dress size is not a state secret, no matter what she says) so that you can get at non-secure info quickly.

After setting up your folders, you’ll want to start creating cards. This is simple as well. The types of cards is extremely varied. I’ve mentioned the credit cards and web site accounts. I haven’t mentioned cards like Warranty information, Software License, Lock Combination, Insurance Policy, Passport, Restaurant… The list is fairly long.

Data Entry

Once you’ve picked a card, data entry is as straightforward as possible. The entry layout is in the Field:Value style that you would expect. It has a nice zoom feature that lets you blow up a field to enter more information into it. The first time you make a change to your new wallet, you’re prompted to save it. After that, all edits are automatically saved. One thing that did bother me, after editing a card, you’re taken back to the card list, not to a view of that card. I had to keep opening the cards to see how my edits were displayed. Maybe that was just an effect of the testing, but it was bothersome.

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You’re given a number of settings you can change, including the icon displayed and the colors used. You can also attach files to the the card and FlexWallet will encrypt them with your wallet. This was a nice feature. As you can see in the screen shots, you can also add free-form notes.

Templates

This is where the tool shines. In addition to the slew of templates it provides, you can create your own templates. Like every other function in FlexWallet, this is quite simple to perform. You define the field name, and select the data type from a list; All upper case, Proper case, Password/PIN, Web Address, E-mail Address, Phone Number, Money/Currency. The data type determines how the data entry & display are formatted. You can create as many templates as you want. One shortcoming in this area is that custom templates are stored in the wallet you are currently accessing. You can export & import templates so it is possible to transfer them. It would just be more convenient to pick them from a central list, minor nit.

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Security

This is the most important aspect of this tool. You’re just entered every piece of personal information that could possibly be used to steal from you into your PDA and you’ve lost that same PDA. Rest assured. FlexWallet is using a combination of BlowFish, XOR and Tiny Encryption Algorithm all with 128 bit keys to encrypt your data. I suppose if you lost your PDA while touring the NSA building, you might have something to worry about, otherwise, I wouldn’t. If you forget your password into your FlexWallet file, kiss your data goodbye. There is no way to re-open that file.