Some Lagniappe for You
By Tiny Ruisch
la·gniappe (lnyp, ln-yp)
n. Chiefly Southern Louisiana & Mississippi
1. A small gift presented by a store owner to a customer with the customer’s purchase.
2. An extra or unexpected gift or benefit. Also called regionally boot.
This month, I thought I’d take a few minutes and revisit a program I told you about almost two years ago. It’s the password program that I use every day when I’m computing. KeePass Password Safe creates strong passwords and keeps them safe.
I use a lot of passwords in my daily computing. As of this writing, I’ve got 63 e-mail addresses. I have eighteen passwords that I use to manage them. I frequent 7 different forums, each with separate password. Then there are my gaming site passwords. Five right now. Did I forget to mention my military and medical passwords? Eight of them. Then there are on line shopping passwords and the most important one of all – the one that logs me into the SWLAPCUG web site. I’ve got more than 50 passwords that I use fairly frequently.
The first week of every month, I change the passwords for websites that keep important data. It seems that some company or government office is always being compromised and losing important data. For most web sites, I use hard to break passwords. Want to see one of my sample passwords? 1+;edYXEQ)-|gvUWxSOZ`B~4ym,x]~U|MV$Hpm&} is a password that I’ve used in the past to gain access to my military retired pay and allotment information. As you can see, it would be pretty hard for anyone to guess what it is.
The program I use to manage all of those passwords is KeePass Password Safe. It is a really easy to use utility that helps you to keep track of all your passwords while keeping them safe. It lets you store all of your passwords in a lightweight, simple to use database that is encrypted so that only you can access it.
KeePass Password Safe stores all of your passwords in groups. That makes it extremely easy to quickly find the one you want. The program does more than just store the passwords; it also lets you easily copy them onto a Web page or an application. You can drag and drop them, copy them to the clipboard, or copy them using a hot key. A great feature that was added since my last review is “Perform Auto Type”. This feature automatically fills in user names and passwords.
KeePass also features a plugin framework. Plugins can provide additional functionality, like support of more file formats for import/export, network functionalities, backup features, etc.
One of the best features of KeePass is the random password generator which creates passwords with characteristics that you specify. That way you can tailor your passwords as needed. For example, some websites won’t let you create a password with underlines while others might require a specific password length. KeePass makes it easy to create any password.
The program also includes support for TAN (Transactional Access Numbers) passwords and allows you to create TAN lists which automatically expire a password once it has been used . Other features include auto-lock, database search and import/export. There are many more features.
Of Course, KeePass also fits in with one of my most demanding prerequisites. The cost is Zero! KeePass is open source. You can read more about the program on the KeePass Password Safe Home Page. Give it a try. I don’t think that you’ll be disappointed.
If you like the program, just tell everyone that you’ve got a SWLAPCUG extra, a bonus perk; a little lagniappe.