I happened to be reading a random blog today, and stumbled across this article called, Generating The Perfect Password. Out of curiousity, I began reading it… It’s full of tips and tricks that people have devised to protect their privacy and security… by creating better passwords.
In my opinion, the best comment of all… was the one by caseydunham who talked about a free program he uses, called… 4UOnly. As he says,
“I use a program called 4UOnly put out by Dillobits Software for storing my passwords. You add an entry for a service (e.g. “WordPress”) along with your username. The program can than generate a random password with the options you select. It also supports copy-paste so you never have to type in your password or even remember what it is. It’s small enough that I keep it on a usb stick so I can bring it wherever I go. “
The program is free, and super simple to use. In fact, believe it or not, it is FASTER for me to log-on to different websites using this program… than the old way… And it is infinitely more secure.
It creates random passwords, like sA3Y2jaIw. Once for each site, you tell it if you need to change anything – like “must contain letters & numbers”, or “must be between 6 and 10 characters long”, etc., etc. It generates a totally random password, and then stores it for you. By default, it changes the password every 30 days – for super security.
A couple of the things that make the program so quick and easy to use, are:
First, it relies on your Windows XP security. As long as you are logged on to the computer that you created the Password List file on, and logged on as the same User,… it does not ask for a password to open the file. For this reason, they recommend that you set Windows XP security to a screen-saver which asks you to login again each time it activates, and set it for a shorter amount of time. (Mine is set to 5 minutes.) Of course, these are always very good ideas anyway… Heaven forbid you ever have nosey house-guests…
Second, it acts sort of like a mini-Bookmarks tool at the same time… It allows you to enter an “Auto Command”… which executes when you click that site. For example, if I want to go log on to MySpace, here’s what I do…
Click the 4UOnly QuickLaunch icon,
Click the padlock icon next to “MySpace” in the 4UOnly list,
Now, the program launches http://myspace.com/ in new window or tab…
Press Ctrl+C (Copy the password), then Alt-Tab (to switch to the browser window), then Ctrl-V (Paste in the password), and press Enter…
And I’m in…
It even automatically clears the clipboard of the password after you Paste it… They seem to have thought of everything.
You can then save this Password List file right along with all your other documents. Mine is called, “Bruce’s Password List.4uo”, and it’s saved in a folder called, “Password Lists”, right among all my other documents… This is the same data area that I keep backed up on my USB Memory stick (which I carry everywhere I go, on my keychain) and on all my other backup devices and methods. I keep a copy of the 4UOnly installation program there too, in case I need it to access it on some other computer… which is one very small file (only 584K).
The thing is… If I have a copy of that Password List file… I cannot open it without the MASTER PASSWORD… unless I am on the same computer, and logged on as the same user… as I was when I first created it. In other words, it is encrypted and password protected itself… and no one can do anything with that file… unless they have the master password… or they are logged on as me, on my computer…
Of course, don’t forget to Uncheck the “Remember Me” boxes on all those web sites’ login screens… And tell your browser, “No, don’t remember my passwords”, thank you very much… And in Windows itself, set up Users for each person who uses your computer in Control Panel… with Passwords for each… And, set your Screen Saver to “On resume, display Welcome screen”, and set the Wait time to something small. Mine is set for 5 minutes, but set it to the shortest amount of time that doesn’t get too annoying – locking you out while you are reading something on the screen… Start with 5 mintes, and add 5 minutes at a time until it no longer annoys you (locks you out while you are reading).
Now, even the CIA won’t be able to hack into your online banking accounts… (at least not through the front door)…
; )
~
