Password management is a fairly niche area but, as it falls under the broader umbrella of Internet security, Symantec has released a product to take care of all password management needs.

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Norton Password Manager 2004 acts as a central repository for all your passwords, credit card numbers and address details, saving you the hassle of remembering all those clever passwords you dreamed up. Instead, you have a single master password for Norton Password Manager that provides easy, automatic access to all your important details. It can be set to fill in automatically most password boxes and online forms currently available.

Password Manager uses Profiles if more than one person uses a single computer and a single user can have multiple profiles tailored to suit their needs. If you choose to store credit card numbers and passwords for other sensitive information, keeping prying eyes out of your profile is, clearly, of the utmost priority. To this end, Symantec provides three levels of security from which to choose.

During the first few days of use, Password Manager will gradually gather all your passwords. After it is fully 'trained', it stores them in an encrypted format on your local PC. If a password is too weak, Password Manager will advise you on how to make it stronger.

All in all, the program does exactly what it says it will and does it smoothly and faultlessly. Occasional applications and Web sites may not get detected, but there are workarounds.

Strong encryption: don't forget your master password, because there's no way to retrieve it.