September 4, 2013

Manage Your Passwords

Filed under: Main — admin @ 12:01 am

Oh, please: Don’t tell me that you’re enough of a sucker to use the same password on all your accounts: PC, Email, all those web sites. Please don’t tell me that’s true!

Good. Okay. You’re safe.

Like me, you probably have several different passwords you use for your various accounts, online and others. That’s wise. Certain peril awaits when you use the same password everywhere. All it takes is one security breech at some website and lo, everything you treasure could disappear. That Bad Guys love that.

I have a unique password for each account on various web sites, all of which are at least 12 characters long. Some of them I’ve memorized. Most of them, however, are input automatically by Chrome, my web browser. (That’s another security issue, one that I’ll address in a moment.) The rest, however, I keep somewhere safe.

Where, you ask?

On my computer, of course. I keep an encrypted file listing all the passwords. So you’d need to guess my computer’s password first, then find the encrypted file, then decrypt it to get access to all my passwords. And even then, some of the more important passwords are written in code.

Because computer storage is volatile, I also have a printed copy of the password list as well. It’s stuck in a stack of papers elsewhere in the office.

I’ll admit that this method isn’t the most secure, but it works for me. And it’s necessary because I have so many passwords. Other, better techniques probably exist.

The must vulnerable passwords, however, are those memorized by your web browser. That’s a great feature, but it’s not very secure.

On the upside, memorizing website passwords makes logging into some sites easy. For example, I haven’t looked up my password to this blog in a long time. That’s because Chrome automatically keeps a copy of the password. When I see the logon page, the password is “typed” for me. I just click the button to sign in. Simple.

The downside: Anyone could pick up my phone, use the Chrome app, and get access to one of my accounts. Worse, someone could access my computer’s copy of Chrome and, under the Settings command, see all the stored passwords listed. Yikes.

To prevent such things from happening, ensure that you always lock your computer or phone when you’re away. Use passwords on both devices, strong passwords. That’s your first line of defense.

And if you don’t have an armada of passwords, and instead rely upon one or two of them for everything, then change those passwords often. I’m not kidding. Having only a single password is very dangerous, no matter how complex that password. Otherwise, keep track of your passwords, write them down, keep them in a safe place. That’s the best you can do to be safe in the treacherous online world.

No Comments

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.


Powered by WordPress