Thursday, April 23, 2009

Reasons You Give for Not Wanting to Change Your Password

With a website that has Change Your Password as part of the title, it's not rocket science what I'll be talking about: that's right, Change Your Password! We dislike to do it, it's a pain, and with all the different types of forms that you fill out online, sometimes you just can't remember your new password every time! But those are all very very good reasons that each person reading these words should have at least a rough plan in mind that reminds you to change your password a few times every year.

1. We dislike changing our passwords Of course we do. We dislike having someone we don't know remind us that it's time to "change your password." Yeah, yeah, yeah, you say. Sometimes for your own security you need to-repeat after me-change your password.

2. It's a pain to change your password. That goes right along with us not liking to do it. If you don't change your password frequently, the "bad guys" will find it. And can I tell you something straight up, when they get some very personal information from you, they won't think it's a pain. At all. So change your password before the bad guys get a chance to hack into your system. (And don't think they are not trying even as you read this. They are).

3. Different forms, different passwords. You can argue all day long about the need to keep different passwords to access different online accounts. These accounts range from banking to library accounts to amazon to ebay to paypal. Financial to informational to pretty much everything in between, people want some information from you. Some may only require a short password plus your email account. Others, such as a financial institution, should require more stringent account and password information. Fortunately, not all passwords nor are all accounts created equally.

But there are some very good free and inexpensive programs on the market that will help you organize your passwords so that hackers can't find you before it's time yet again to change your password.

In my next post, I will discuss tools you can use to help you organize your passwords so that when you do change your password, it will all be recorded.

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