Why DuckyHelper is built not to type your passwords or card numbers

TL;DR:

• DuckyHelper is built not to type your passwords or card numbers. You sign in yourself.

• We keep the rule even when it makes a task a little slower.

• Doing work in your apps is in early access, on Mac.

Some of our rules are judgment calls that we expect to refine. This one is not. DuckyHelper is built not to type your passwords or card numbers, and we do not plan an exception, a setting or a shortcut that changes that.

The rule

When DuckyHelper works in your apps (early access, on Mac), it reads pages, clicks, scrolls and fills in ordinary fields with its own cursor. There are two kinds of value it is built not to enter for you:

• passwords,

• card numbers.

These are the values that prove who you are or move your money. Anyone who has them can act as you, so they should only ever pass through your own hands.

What happens at a sign-in page

Say you ask DuckyHelper to check an account on a site where you are not signed in. It gets as far as the sign-in page and stops. It tells you the page needs you to sign in, and you type your own password yourself. Once you are in, it carries on with the job from there.

The same goes for checkout. DuckyHelper can add items to a cart and fill in a shipping form, but when the page asks for card details you enter them, and because paying is one of the two things it is built to ask about first, you also see the payment before it happens.

Why it does not type them to save time

It would be easy to build the opposite. Keep your passwords somewhere, type them in when a page asks, and every task runs from start to finish without interrupting you. It would also be faster.

We chose not to, for three reasons.

1. A stored secret is a target. To type your password, an assistant would first have to hold it, and anything that holds passwords becomes worth attacking. The privacy page says DuckyHelper's memory will not save a note that looks like a password or a card number, and not typing them belongs to the same idea.

2. Pages can be tricked. A web page can try to look like a sign-in form or a checkout. A flat rule, never type these, gives a clever page much less to work with.

3. A clear rule is easier to trust than a clever one. "It never types them" is something you can check by watching. "It types them only when it is sure" is not.

What you do instead

In practice it costs you a few seconds. You sign in once in the window DuckyHelper is working in, and then you leave it to get on with the job. Many sites keep you signed in afterward, so you may not meet the sign-in page often.

A quick check: If a page or a pop-up ever asks you to hand a password or a card number to DuckyHelper so it can type it for you, that is not how it works. You type those yourself, into the page that needs them. Signing in to your own DuckyHelper account is the same: you do it.

What if a job needs both a password and a send?

Then the two rules simply stack. Say you ask it to reply to a message in a mailbox you are signed out of. It stops at the sign-in page and waits for you. Once you are signed in, it writes the reply and stops again, this time to show you the message before anything is sent. It is built so that it does not need your password, and so that you see the message before it leaves.

We like this about the design. Each rule is small enough to state in one line, and the two do not need to know about each other to work.

How this fits with its other limits

This rule sits next to two others. It listens and looks only while the pill is open, covered in when DuckyHelper looks at your screen. And it's built to ask before it sends or pays. Together they make a short list you can hold in your head: it only listens when you press the key, it's built to ask before it sends or pays, and it's built not to type your passwords or card numbers.

For the full picture of data handling, read our privacy page. If something here is unclear, write to privacy@duckyhelper.com.