Link Safe

You can carry your password with you in the form of a key. Predator (www.predator-usb.com) turns a USB stick into a clever password. This means you don’t need to remember complex passwords, but you mustn’t lose the USB stick. Once Predator is installed you’ll see a basic black and orange interface. The program’s default settings are mostly fine but you should change Read Interval from 30 to 5 so Predator checks for the USB stick’s presence every five seconds. If Predator doesn’t detect the USB stick, the computer will lock.

To set up Predator on a USB stick, type a password in the New Password field and tick Always Required. Insert the USB stick you want to use as a password and select it in the ‘Create key on Drive’ dropdown box. Click Create Key, then OK. Predator will restart your PC to complete the process. Once it’s restarted, click OK, launch Predator and it will minimise to the System Tray. It will now run every time you turn on your computer, so once it’s configured you don’t need to worry about it.

Just remove the USB stick to lock your computer. If you lose the USB stick, you can unlock your computer by left-clicking anywhere and pressing Enter on the keyboard three times. Type your

Predator password to access your computer again. To use Predator as a physical login you’ll need to set it up again as before.

Predator works brilliantly in Windows XP, Vista and 7 and is a great way of preventing access to your

computer. However, on Windows 8 it doesn’t disable the touchscreen. When we tried it we were still able to swipe to open the Charms bar and access our apps, though we couldn’t access the Desktop.