I started thinking about this
the other day when I had to update my e-mail address yet again at another
site. It’s amazing how many places use your e-mail address as your user
name. It’s a huge pain trying to remember all the sites you use
especially when you get a new e-mail address like I did last year.
But
this got me to thinking of all the many places we now have accounts in
the Internet age. It wasn’t too long ago when you had just a few of
these. Remember you were told not to use the same user name and password
for different sites. And the big thing was to never ever never write
this information down. This was especially true of the password. Also
for the password it had to be something unique, something that people
couldn’t easily figure out (so not your birthday date).
I think
in the here and now that isn’t all that practical anymore. I thought on
this for just a little while and came up with 15 places that I have some
sort of an account that requires a user name and password. How are you
possibly supposed to remember all of these without writing them down?
This is especially true if you are supposed to have a different user
name and password for every account you have.
That’s why using
you e-mail address as the user name makes things a little easier. That
is unless you’ve changed your e-mail address in the not too distant past
like I’ve done.
So the question is what to do to remember all
of these user names and passwords. And the logical response is I bet there’s an app for that. And
you’d be right. I did a search at the Apple App store and there are all
sorts of apps to store all your passwords while keeping
them safe. But of course there’s just one thing, there must be a
password to get access it. Where do you keep that one?
2 comments:
I use Last Pass (https://lastpass.com/), which is "freemium" software, meaning it's free, but you can also pay and get added features (like ability to use it on multiple devices). The company also makes Xmarks, which synchronises your web book marks won all your different web browsers (I have three). If you pay, it will sync to smartphones, tablets, etc.
Last Pass removes access to site logins via Apple's Keychain (which isn't secure), and it can also generate random and very strong passwords. This is something most people will do after having Last Pass run an audit which almost often finds we re-used the same password too often, have ones that aren't very strong, etc.
You're right, you do have to remember one master password, without which you lose all access to your logins permanently (the company doesn't record your password). To make sure it's a atrong password, most people write it down and keep it somewhere safe, away from their computer.
So do you have this on your computer or on your phone or both places.
I was wondering about where you put the app or program. I guess it makes sense to have it on your phone so the list is portable.
Post a Comment