Where Are Your Passwords?
Because I understand that I should never use the same password (or variation of) twice I have roughly 43 passwords working at any one time (yes I took the time to count them all when I was writing this!). Not only does that mean I have 43 different passwords to remember but because I stick to the ‘no password should be less than 12 character rule’ it also means that I have over 516 different letters, numbers and special characters to commit to memory.
This might have been doable several years ago…but as the years go by I find myself forgetting lots of important things. Things like meetings that I commit to without having my phone and even where I park the car (luckily my anniversary is not in that group…thank you smart phone!).
Recently a friend of mine suggested a website that stores your passwords for you, “You can store your passwords there and they are 100% safe because they are encrypted, and you can even use two-step authentication.” My brain had trouble processing a few things in that statement.
First and probably most importantly anytime I store information on the web or in ‘the cloud’ I make sure it isn’t proprietary, confidential, basically anything that I don’t want anyone else to see. My passwords fall into all of those categories. Secondly, nothing and I mean nothing, is 100% safe when it has to do with the internet or data storage in general.
By the way the picture at the start of this article is a screen shot of Sony’s old password storage method. They made it easy for employees and the hackers! On to the 64 million dollar question; how do I protect my passwords? Wait for it….in pencil in a notebook stored in a very safe place. I know I know, “not very high tech” but you have to admit it is most definitely better than Sony’s method.
So my question to the masses…what do you do to store and protect your passwords and why? Let me know…let us all know.
