From the Clipperz.com website:

• Store and manage your passwords and online credentials.
• Log in to your web services without entering any username or password.
• Protect any other sensitive textual information: confidential notes, codes for burglar alarms, software serial numbers, PINs and credit card details, …
• (Coming soon) Share secrets with family members and associates.

We here at BeforeYouAreGone.com are definitely excited by that last option coming soon. After all, the main purpose of this blog is to get you to prepare your friends or associates for your eminent demise and being able to share information with them in a secure manner is very much a necessity for any tool we review and/or recommend.

Account creation is quite simple and done rather elegantly (very much a Web 2.0 application). The only information you need is the account name you choose to use and the passphrase that will be used for logins and for encryption of your information. There is no email field, no phone number, nothing that identifies or links you to your account. It is also important to note that they will not recover your passphrase. Thus, it is extremely important to not only make it tough to crack, but easy to remember. After all, this service is only as good as the passphrase you choose. (It also helps to remember what you named the username to begin with.)

After account creation, you are presented with information about creating “cards”. Each card contains data that you choose to place on it. It can range from anything such as your credit card website account information to your favorite color. What you choose to place in each card is up to you.

Clipperz provides a bookmarklet to use for creating Direct Logins, these are cards developed for the purpose of providing your login information on a website and submitting it (very useful if you have someone looking over your shoulder and you don’t want them to even see what the account name might be). When you create Direct Logins, your account shows a list of links that can be used to automatically login to the specific site you setup.

Speaking of someone “looking over your shoulder”, if you need to step away from your computer, you can just click on “lock” and the page is “locked” only showing a passphrase entry window. The only options at this point are (1) enter the correct passphrase or (2) shutdown the browser window. Very useful in situations involving prying eyes.

Your data is not just stored on Clipperz’ servers as you have the option of Exporting (and subsequently importing) your data or creating an “offline copy”. Exporting provides the ability of “backing up” your data, but that is merely it. However, for additional functionality, try the “offline copy” which creates a duplicate of all the features of the website in a ZIP file you can extract on your computer and use as if you were online. This is extremely handy when you don’t have internet access, but need to get your list of credit cards (and their customer support numbers) due to your wallet/purse being stolen.

If you no longer wish to store your account on Clipperz.com, deleting it is as easy as choosing the Delete option under Account. How many websites out there make it that easy?

Clipperz.com is really a cool site and very well designed. However, we do have a few misgivings and it has nothing to do with security.

First of all, the use of Direct Logins is very much intended for higher-level users. After all, the bookmarklet does make it easy to create them, but if you open up the card to edit the information, it is not all that clear what is going on unless you know something about HTML forms. As noted in the documentation, this feature will not work with all websites (Wordpress worked fine, but it is a simple login process).

Secondly, and this is really minor, when you logout from the website, instead of being presented with an option to login again, the page gives you 10 seconds (not hardly enough time to read the paragraph given) before it redirects you to the Wikipedia entry on Phishing. This should really be a link that is presented should the user wish to learn more about it.

Overall, we were quite impressed with this application and hope that it continues to improve. It is a great way to save all those logins you’ve been meaning to save “Before You Are Gone”.