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How To Manage Your Username And Password The Easy And Secure Way by: Jerry Yu Have been an Internet user for more than 9 years, I have 100's of logins and passwords to keep. I'm paranoid. I'm now even more paranoid after I joined YMMSS because I use online payment systems on weekly basis if not daily. I used to use Microsoft Excel to manage my usernames, passwords, and other registration information, both online and offline. Excel is not safe because there are programs to crack password protected Excel workbooks and I even cracked the spreadsheet and VBA source code password for one of my old Excel financial models I developed. Today I still use Excel to store some personal information but I only save the Excel file on my another PC that is not connected to Internet. In my article '6 Essential Steps to Protect Your Computer On the Internet', I highly recommended the award winning RoboForm. Free version of RoboForm (http://www.roboform.com) does come with limitations such as 10 Passcards only. If you don't want to buy the Pro version (costs $29.99 as of my writing), there is an easy-to-use freeware (see below) you can download right now and manage unlimited usernames and passwords. Download freeware Password Safe from SourceForge.net - the Open Source community. https://sourceforge.net/projects/passwordsafe/ Here are some great features of Password Safe: No installation is required. Simply download and double click the pwsafe.exe file. Easy portable. Just copy and paste the EXE file and .dat database file to any disks. Be aware that when you open Password Safe in the other disk, you need to specify the database file location (the .dat file). One master password unlocks an entire password database that can contain all your other passwords. Grouping. Usernames and passwords can be grouped into different categories you define, eg. Email Address, Payment, etc. You are in total control. Strong, random password generation. Copy username and password to clipboard so that you don't have to type them. Always keep in mind that you should never type any username and password. Browse to URL. With one click, the URL related to your username and password can be opened in your default web browser. Another save on typing. You can create more than one password database (but you have to memorize more than one master password. Not recommended.) Here are some tips of using Password Safe (version 2.04) and managing password in general. Tip #1 - Always create a strong master password (Safe Combination as used in the software). Strong password should meet the following criteria: At least 8 characters long to prevent cracking. The longer the better. The password should contain lowercase, uppercase, numeric, and any other characters that are available on keyboard. Ideally you should not use any meaningful words or numbers in the password. Totally random password is the best. Tip #2 - Let PasswordSafe generate random password for you. To generate random password: Click the menu item Edit. Select Add Entry (or use corresponding icon button). When the dialogue window opens, on the right hand side, you can see a Random Password Generate button. Click it, a random password will be automatically inserted in the Password field. The generated random password is constructed according to the password policy defined in Password Safe. You can modify the default policy. Click the menu item Manage. In the dropdown menu, click Options. Click the Password Policy tab. Change the policy based on the strong password criteria stated above. Some sites only allow alphanumeric passwords so make sure you select the appropriate check boxes when this is the case. Tip #3 - Very Important: Never type your master password when open PasswordSafe. Keylogger spyware can record keystrokes. How can you enter master password without typing? I do this. Step 1: Open a Notepad file (.txt). Step 2: Copy and paste an article from any Internet website to this .txt file. Step 3: Select characters from this article and copy, paste to form your master password. Tip #4 - Very Important: Never lose your master password. I memorize my master password. In addition, I also physically write it down to a hand written study material that has my previous uni works. Among the '1
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