Passwords and How To Securely and Safely Keep Track Of Them

Passwords are one of the most important things that a user has to take into consideration when they use the Internet. More and more people and businesses are putting more and more information “In the Cloud.” Having convenient access to that information is important but you need to take the proper precautions.

The first line of defense in protecting your information on the Internet is a password. You should think carefully about what passwords you use. You need to be able to remember them, but you don’t want them easy to guess. You want them to be random, at least 8-10 characters, case sensitive, and contain punctuation marks as well as numbers and letters. You should also not use personal information as a password. That would make it easier to guess and give a thief another piece of information that could be used to steal your identity.

Since companies of all sizes are getting hacked, it is also important that you don’t use the same password in different places. If a thief gets into one of your accounts, either by hacking you or hacking a company where you have an account, it would be relatively easy to scan for your other accounts and try the same password in multiple places.

If you have to control multiple passwords, how do you remember them? Some people use a list, while others have a system to remember their different passwords.

A list could be lost or stolen and system to remember passwords could also be cracked if a thief were to obtain enough samples.

I use a password manager program which not only has a password generator to create multiple random passwords and keep track of them but is also able to sync this passwords across my various computers, phones and tablets. There are several commercial products, but my favorite is 1Password from Agile Bits I have been using it for several years and have been very satisfied with it especially when working with a Macintosh, an iPhone, and an iPad. They also have versions for Windows computers and the other types of phones and tablets.

I could go into more detail about 1Password but there is an excellent episode available about the program from a podcast called Mac Power Users Episode 173 (www.MacPowerUsers.com)

I hope all of you can continue to use the Internet and stay safe and secure.