One of the most challenging tasks today for technology users is managing passwords. We have sometimes hundreds of accounts for online services and organizations. Managing all of this becomes a difficult task to do effectively.

Unfortunately, all scammers and general online low-life types know this and are looking to exploit it. They assume people will take the easy way out and make passwords easy to remember and use them in multiple places.

Password Tips

• Do not use the same password twice
• Do not use any combination of personal information that can be found on your social media accounts
  • Kids Name
  • Dogs Name
  • Birthdays
  • Addresses
  • Etc.
• Let Google, Microsoft or other password tools generate them for you
• Keep them safe in an encrypted password store.

Most people do not realize if someone wants to hack you they will first try to learn about you and use that information to seed password guessing applications or just trick you in some way.

Password Tools

I highly recommend using a password tool for storing passwords. All of the popular browsers have a password storage tool. The concept of how they store passwords is good but if you get compromised via some types of web browser hack’s. The attacker could gain access to this information, but frankly, nothing is 100% safe and fool-proof.

The other problem with these tools is they make your information available across devices which syncs data to the cloud. This creates a vulnerability to have all passwords breached without the proper multifactor authentication rules in place.

There are popular online password tools 1Password and LastPass. These tools are generally easy to use and offer apps for various platforms but also come with a monthly fee. Another tool that has been around for many years, is open source and still available as a free download. Password Safe is a nice tool because of the price and because you do not have to use any cloud services. Password information is stored in an encrypted file.

The main thing is to have an organized strategy for passwords as they are much more important than many people realize until it is too late!

Best Regards,

David Muegge