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Password Minder: The blank notebook that got laughed out of production

An infomercial product for keeping passwords shockingly didn't find an audience.

The Password Minder

Passwords are a constant headache, a headache that will one day grow so bad that—if infomercials can be believed—your grandmother will pound a table in frustration. How to manage them? Early this year, one of the largest as-seen-on-TV companies produced its innovative answer: the Password Minder.

Despite the grandiose name, the Password Minder is a blank notebook. It has a black cover. You write all your passwords in it. It costs $10 (plus shipping and handling).

“Who can remember all those tricky combinations?” the infomercial asks. “You’ll never lose critical computer settings again!” it exclaims as a green “Safe Computer Guarantee” appears on the screen.

The product was mocked mercilessly. The infomercial was posted to Youtube in January, highlighted for ridicule on Infomercial Hell in March, and then savaged by comedian and talk show host Ellen Degeneres in April. Security guru Bruce Schneier saw the Degeneres video and called it "pretty good," while a Sophos security researcher thought the product so dumb he questioned whether the informercial was even real. "As Ellen amusingly asks, wouldn't it be cheaper to save money and write all your passwords on a $5 bill?" he asked.

"This is actually real, saw one of those in a bookstore the other day," wrote a commenter on Schneier's site on April 24. "A nice looking, large in length size, made out of suede cover."

Naturally we had to seek out such a product. But when we went to purchase our own Internet Password Minder, it proved impossible to find—it wasn't even offered on the website of Telebrands, which had produced the infomercial. Was this thing "actually real"?

If they buy it, we build it

List your passwords alphabetically, so it's easy for you and others to find them!

Telebrands is a massive—and massively successful—company that generates many multimillion dollar products (like the PedEgg with 40 million sold or the “view-sharpening” AmberVision sunglasses, which achieved $150 million in sales). The company is responsible for most of the late night infomercials advertising products that range from creative to the dubious to the nonsensical. Telebrands products originate from a range of sources including pitches from individual inventors, but Telebrands would only tell us that Internet Password Minder came from a mysterious “company.”

Yes, the idea was real. So was the infomercial. One of the ways Telebrands tests its products is by generating a commercial to gauge interest, a Telebrands PR representative told Ars. “In this case, the company created a test infomercial to determine interest in the product," the rep said. "Since there was minimal interest, the product was not produced for public distribution."

While the Password Minder was widely mocked for providing poor security, writing your passwords in an offline notebook isn't the worst thing you can do so long as the notebook is stashed in a private location (don't keep it at the office!), your home isn't burgled, and you don't have snooping friends and family. It's certainly a better approach than using a single, easily crackable password on every site you visit—as many nontechnical users still do. As Schneier noted the Password Minder "is—if you think about it—only slightly different than Password Safe," his own encrypted database for storing passwords on your computer. Most problems come from online hacking, not bad guys grabbing notebooks full of passwords.

Of course that's no excuse for an informercial that shows an actress stashing the Password Minder in her purse for a day on the town. (And if you are burgled, you're in trouble.)

The phone number for Internet Password Minder is now defunct. The domain now redirects to Telebrands’ main site where you can still pick up items like the SlimAway girdle, Pasta Boat, and FlipJack Non-Stick Pancake Flipper.

The sun has set on the Password Minder, which at least taught us that the world does not want an overpriced, alphabetized notebook to store its passwords. Still, we got to laugh at terrible footage of an old woman gently pounding her fist at a blue screen. And that's got to be worth something.

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Channel Ars Technica