Mida sa ütlesid: kuidas te paroole jälgite

All my passwords are offered automatically by LastPass when creating an account and they pop-up whenever I need to login. This means that I use a different password for every single web service and yeah, I don’t even remember my Twitter/Facebook/Google password, but my LastPass does!

LastPass Premium remembers passwords for me. Before that, I had one or two major passwords that I used for most sites. Then I came to realize that method is risky. My LastPass score was only 13 when I started using it, and now I have a much better score because I have changed my habits, thanks to LastPass.

KeePass, on Dropbox for access by my several machines. On crucial sites (banking, credit cards, &c.) I use 20+ character gobbledygook passwords generated by KeePass. On many forum-type sites I use the same old user name and password, since the worst that could happen is that someone could post something in my non-recognizable name.

KeePass Portable on my D: drive, with another copy (program & database) on my USB drive…password protected, of course.

To those that use “1 or 2 or 12 passwords for everything”…just wait until an account is hacked and somebody you thought you could trust is rummaging through your bank account and emails. If you’re that lax in keeping your password secure, you’re probably using your birthday, your middle name, etc. to generate all these passwords…and they’re easily cracked. Use uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and some punctuation to generate real random passwords and store them securely! Better yet, change a few of them each week just to be safer. (Just ask Sony how much pain a hacked account can cause!)

Roboform (now known as Roboform Anywhere).

Has the advantage of automatically (and securely) synchronizing your passwords across all your instances (unlimited).

Has a very nice configurable password generator feature for times when you want maximum security or when you don’t feel like thinking of a new password.

Also lets you attach notes to each login, allowing you to save things like answers to those annoying security questions that you’ll never remember the exact answer several years from now.

If you are using someone else’s computer or don’t want to install Roboform on a particular machine, you can look up your username & password on online.roboform.com.

[I use] 3 stages: 1) a set of words – sentence, phrase, addresses etc that you can remember – needs to make a string that is at least 50 characters long 2) an algorithm that allows you to get a set of characters from that set of words – such as every ‘n’ characters 3) write down the start point in that string, and the value of ‘n’ that you will use and the number of characters…

And – for those ‘passwords’ that require numeric values the location within the string of the numeric that will be generated from the alpha code in the string – either a=1..i=9, j=10 etc.

And for those that require a non-numeric character there is the characters associated with the number on the keyboard that you get from using the number generator from the string

So – that’s 3 numbers, and optionally – another 1 or 2 numbers. You get to write down a 5 digit code that lets you re-create the passcode, but never write down the source string so no-one else can calculate it. For the number and special character – you decide if the clue number is going to be from the string start, from the startpoint (first number), or from the end point 1st+2nd*3rd etc.

Once you have the algorithm pick a character to be the Capital letter, the number and the special character. Consistency makes it easy to remember the character selection algorithm/calculation/formula and after a while you won’t even have problems remembering the source string.

Source – string – what names etc. do you pass on the way to work – streets, shops, business names! Avoid bringing the relations [such as a spouses name] into it.

As my spouse is not computer literate (read that geek) we keep our passwords in a binder near the computer. It’s not elegant nor geeky, but it works well for us, and if I’m not available someone else that needs in can get there.

Since 1981, I’ve used index cards and index card file box. Low tech and always handy.

I have a composition notebook with all my passwords and save it in a 2 ton safe where my birth certificate and gold are stored.