Thoughts From a Clicker
By Tiny Ruisch
Do you use a password manager, or do you do like many others and have a just a few passwords that you use over and over? If you answered no to using a manager, I’d just like to say that you are an idiot. I’m sorry to be so blunt, but it is true. In the modern age of computing it is important that you use hard to decipher, unique passwords for all the sites where you have an account. It is trivial for hackers to try stolen user names and passwords on several sites.
I thought I’d take a few minutes and tell you about the Password Program that I use every day when I’m computing. I did a Google Search for “free password manager” and got 114,000,000 results. I’ve carefully researched all of them except for the last four million or so.
I use a lot of passwords in my daily computing. As of this writing, I’ve got 68 e‑mail addresses. 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, government and medical passwords? Twelve of them. Then there are on line shopping passwords, miscellaneous social networks and many more. 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? qyF+,CMqaF+@x!,SdqyF+,CMqaF;+@x!,Sd is a password that used to open one of my web sites for editing.
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.
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, 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, which means that there have been a lot of plug-ins developed. You can download the source code and modify it to meet your needs. Keepass is a Windows program that has been ported to many other Operating Systems, including Android, iPhone/iPad, Blackberry, JavaScript for browsers and many Linux distributions.
You can read more about the program on the KeePass Password Safe Home Page. Give it a try. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.
Thanks for reading.