Password Security : How To Deal With Multiple Logins
21 June 2009Five years ago, things were effortless online – you often had just a single password to remember for your email account. Nowadays however, it’s not unusual to have 10 or 20 passwords created for innumerous online services that you’re a customer of. And what happens? Many individuals are inclined to utilise the same password for all or nearly all the services they’ve signed up to. Some people may not think their Twitter account as being majorly vital, but it is if you’re using the very same password for that as you are for your PayPal account. For sure, the convenience of having to remember just a single password is tempting, but what if an individual gets their hands on that one password? That’s right, they potentially have their mitts on all of your accounts that share that very same password. And if you think they can’t know the other online services you’ve joined, it isn’t essential. They can run programs which test literally tens of thousands of online services against your username/password pair that they already have.
It’s a problem, but it’s easily remedied. Actually, it’s not required to store each and every account name/password. Let your browser do it. Be it your Yahoo Login or Email password. Just ask your web browser to store each username/password, and then setup a central password (“master password”) just in case someone gets hold of your computer. If they do so, they will have to key in the master password to login to any of the services you’ve signed up to. So in effect, you can sign up to dozens of services, and just need to actually remember one single password : your master password for your web browser.
When making passwords, make them random and long, such as 0343434dD which is a mixture of numbers, lower and upper case characters. Since it’s not required to remember them, be as obscure as you like. Whatever you do, don’t use normal words as your password, as these are effortless to identify for 3rd parties.
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