Good Tools To Help You Keep Your Password Secure

Good Tools To Help You Keep Your Password Secure
Online security is becoming increasingly more difficult to maintain. Hackers or "black hat" folks are finding more and more ways to get into your system and cause havoc. In a previous post, I pointed out the reasons why you should change your password. Today I'll discuss the tools you can use to keep "fresh" passwords at your fingertips. There's nothing worse than visiting a website you've visited in the past year only to find out that before you can go further into the site, you will need to provide the password. You created it once, used it twice, and now you don't have a clue what it is. I will be discussing two basic products. You'll be amazed at how simple they really are.

1. A good old fashioned basic text editor. As I write this I am using a program called EditPad Lite. It's free and additional features will set you back a mere $50 I believe. The free version is powerful and whoops Notepad hands down. Notepad has a tendency to post hard returns when you cut and paste text to other applications. Enter the site, email address/username, then the password. Store it in a handy place on your computer. Obviously this won't work if you are using a public computer. For the most part, if only your friends and family are using the computer, put the file where you can access it easily.

2. Secondly there are countless password storage applications on the market. I am most familiar with a little app called Roboform. It is free for the first ten forms you enter data into. You'll realize very quickly that ten passwords is not nearly enough. Unlimited password storage wll cost you $30 with this application. It's a good little tool to have. You can customize it to suit your needs.

Next post I will discuss password strength. Password strength will especially be important when entering sensitive data online.