We have online accounts for so many things these days – email, social networking, cloud services, financial services, medical accounts, even the local library. Security experts tell us that passwords should be long, cryptic, and unique for each account, but if you follow their guidelines, how can you possibly manage your passwords and remember them all? You’re trading security for convenience and saying hello to digital frustration.
I recommend handing over control to those security experts by signing up for a manage your passwords service.
Download a password manager program to your computer and your mobile devices that will help you to generate passwords and securely save them. You can read about that here: How to Manage Your Passwords
If you’re uncomfortable with handing over your passwords to a service, then the next best thing is to write down your passwords the old fashioned way – on a piece of paper. Keep it in a safe place in your home – don’t take it with you.
You could even use a code that only you understand. For example, instead of writing down the password “ILuv99RedBaloons!”, you could write “IL..99RBs!”.
You should be sure that you remember the password to log into your computer user account, especially if you have a laptop that you take with you, and perhaps a computer administrator password, if your computer is set up with one. You may also need to remember your Apple ID or Google ID and password to install apps on your phone.
Use a strong password that you’ll remember for those. For everything else – for all of those Internet accounts – use a unique password for each service and go to your safely stored password list when you need those passwords. Here’s an article from Google on how to choose passwords: Creating a Strong Password.
It may be inconvenient to have to go and look up that unique password, but it beats having to recover from a data breach!
Need help with passwords?
