Hints and Tips

Command and Option Keys

Password Key™ is instructed to see any attempt to press a command or option key as an illegal attempt. It will shutdown your computer almost immediately if you press one while it is running. This is true no matter what screen is showing at the time. If you are used to pressing Command-W to close a window, or planned to use the Cut (Command-x), Copy (Command-c), or Paste (Command-v), etc., please note that these are illegal commands in Password Key™.

Fooling onlookers

Since Password Key™ ignores any spaces that you type in, you can fool onlookers by inserting spaces while you type in your password. For example, if you are using PROJECT2 as your password, and typed eight characters while someone was looking over your shoulder, they may later try to guess which 8-character word you were using. However, if you enter PRO<space>J<space>EC<space>T2 it looks like:

 

instead of the eight characters you had before.

No way could they guess the actual word needed to get access to your system. Not only that, you can actually enter a different number of characters each time you enter your system! That would really blow their minds! They'll never figure it out! Hahahahahahahahah! (sorry, I got carried away.)

Using Password Key™ as one of several startup applications

On my system, I have several programs that start up when I boot my system. Quickmail, two communications programs and, of course, Password Key™. If you allow these others to start up after Password Key, there is a possibility that a user could switch to the finder while one of these other programs is running and bypass Password Key. 

Of course, if they switched to Password Key™, they would then be locked out, but they could do a lot of snooping while at the finder.

The solution is to rename Password Key™ so that it loads last in the sequence. A simple soultion is to add a "z" or "~" (Tilde) to the beginning of the name like: ~Password Key. This allows the program to run last and therefore, have control over what is going on.

Password Key™ Does Not Interfere with other programs!

You can leave Password Key™ running from startup or while you are on break and other programs should continue to operate in the background. Screen savers, mail programs, communications, etc., should all work even though your system is "locked."  If you have a problem with this, let me know and I'll address it. However, at this time, I know of no conflicts.