WinAuth

Seeing as how almost every online service out there needs to take a lot of security measures nowadays, it should come as no surprise that authenticators have become more prevalent lately. Secret codes sent to your mobile, or even special devices are being used to make sure that only you have access to the information you are trying to access, which theoretically makes it that much more difficult for hackers to acquire your valuable data.

WinAuth is a tool that aims to simplify the process a little bit and bring down the number of different applications you have to use in order to gain access to your accounts. To do this, it allows you to link all of your accounts and only use a single tool to log in, while keeping the data in a secure file on your computer. Although it sounds shady, the application does a good job of protecting you from unwanted intruders.

As such, whether you want to easily authenticate yourself with a Google account whenever you are asked for a code, or you want to link your World of Warcraft/Diablo III accounts, WinAuth is able to support a wide variety of options. All of the codes are continuously generated by the application and they change every other couple of seconds, taking into consideration the current time.

Creating a new authenticator is quite simple and straightforward, although you really need to make sure that you remember the password you choose. Although there are solutions that can get you out of trouble if you happen to forget it, you’d be better off not having to go through that kind of experience. However, the process itself is very intuitive and it only takes a couple of seconds.

Security-wise, everything is stored on your computer into an encrypted file, so it should theoretically be impossible to reach unless someone physically gained access to the computer in question. Not only that, but the application is both portable and open source, which means that you can easily check out the code in case you want to make sure everything is secure. As for the portable bit, it just means that you are free to run and transfer the application without having to reinstall it.

In the end, WinAuth provides you with a valuable service, especially if you happen to regularly need to authenticate on a variety of websites. Not only that, but gamers can also take advantage of the tool and put a lock on their favorite Battle.net games, or various other MMOs that use authenticators.