HP SimplePass

HP SimplePass turns the fingerprint reader on an HP laptop into a way of signing in. Enrol a finger by swiping it over the reader until the indicator reaches full, and from then on a swipe signs you into your account on the machine.

Save a website’s login in the program, and a swipe on that site opens the browser, goes to the page and fills in the name and password. A launcher page called My LaunchSite lists every saved site, so one swipe takes you to the bank, another to the mail. The same vault accepts a PIN or a password in place of the finger for the days the reader misreads.

That was its job, and the tense matters. HP SimplePass belongs to a generation of laptops that shipped with a fingerprint reader before the operating system knew how to use one. The system now handles fingerprint sign-in itself, and this program conflicts with that built-in support rather than extending it, which is why the maker’s own support forum answers most questions about it with advice to uninstall.

It came in two series that do not work with each other’s readers, the earlier of which is no longer supported at all. The sections below describe what it does, where it still runs, and the honest answer to whether it should.

Signing in with a finger

HP SimplePass enrolment registers up to a handful of fingers per account, each by repeated swipes until the reader has a complete image. After that, the sign-in screen accepts a swipe in place of the password. The program can switch between user accounts by finger, so each member of a household signs into their own account with their own swipe. A setting turns the quick sign-in off without removing the enrolment.

The reader itself is a strip or a pad on the laptop, and its driver comes separately from the program. For checking which reader and driver a machine actually has before matching them, a system profiler lists the hardware. The two must match, since the program was written for a particular family of readers, and a laptop with the other series of reader needs the other series of program. That pairing is the first thing that goes wrong when either is reinstalled from the wrong source.

Websites and applications

The HP SimplePass password side stores the login for a site in a vault, protected by the finger or the master password. Visit a site where a login is saved and a swipe fills the form. A browser plugin for the common browsers of the time handled the filling, and My LaunchSite, the program’s own page, launches any saved site and signs in with one swipe.

Applications that ask for a password can be registered the same way, so a swipe signs into a program as well as a page.

My Vault and the rough edges

My Vault is where the saved logins live, and where they are viewed, edited or removed. A reviewer of the time noted one habit to expect. Launching a site through the program could close the browser without warning, which is the sort of rough edge a program of this age keeps for ever. For filling logins with browser extensions that still load, an open-source password manager with extensions does what the old plugins no longer can.

Where it still runs

On the laptop it shipped with, on the operating system it shipped with, HP SimplePass still does everything above. Owners of older HP machines who kept the original system and the matching reader driver have a working fingerprint sign-in and a working vault, and nothing about either has stopped working on its own.

That is the only place it belongs. On a current system the built-in fingerprint sign-in takes the reader over, the program fights it, and the driver that suits one does not suit the other. The maker’s forum has years of threads in which the fix for a reader that stopped working was to remove this program and let the system handle the finger.

A reinstall of the system on an old laptop usually ends the same way.

The honest answer about passwords

The vault was the second half of HP SimplePass, and it is the half to retire first. A password manager that has had no security updates in a long time is not a sound place for logins, whatever the lock on it. The browser plugins it relied on belong to browsers that have since changed how plugins work. The fingerprint sign-in on an old machine is a convenience with little at stake. The vault is a store of your accounts, and it deserves a maintained home.

Move the saved logins out of My Vault and into a password manager that is still developed, such as KeePass for a local encrypted file. Then the old program can keep doing the one thing it does harmlessly, opening the laptop with a swipe, or be removed with nothing lost.

Conclusion

HP SimplePass suits only the owner of an older HP laptop who kept the system it shipped with and wants the fingerprint reader to open the machine and the saved sites. It does that the way it did when the laptop was new. On that machine it still works as designed.

Everywhere else it is a program the system has replaced, and its vault is a store that should be moved out. Keep it for the swipe on an old laptop if you like, carry the logins to a maintained manager, and on a current machine let the built-in sign-in have the reader.