Ten years ago, when online, you might have had just one password to store for your email address. These days however, it’s not uncommon to have 20 or 30 passwords created for countless internet services you’ve joined. And what happens? Many individuals tend to use the very same password for all or nearly all the services they’ve signed up to. Some people may not think their Facebook member profile as being hugely important, but it is if you’re utilising the very same password for that as you are for your WorldPay account. Sure, it’s easier to only have to remember one password, but what if a hacker gets their mitts on that one password? That’s right, they in theory have their mitts on all of the servives you’ve signed up to that use that same password. If you think they don’t know the other online services you’ve joined, they don’t need to. They launch programs which test literally thousands of services against your account name/password pair that they already have.
This is a problem we all have to think about, but it can be solved. Actually, you don’t need to store each and every account name/password. Why? Your browser can store this data. Be it your Twitter acount or Email password. Just ask your browser to remember each account name/password, and then setup a central password (”master password”) just in case a person else gets physical access to your computer. Physical access to your computer will still require knowing the master password to gain access to all the other passwords. Or to put it another way, you can join dozens of services, and only need to remember one single password : your web browser’s master password (achieving what you wanted to do in a safe fashion - involving just the single password.
When creating passwords, make them random and long, such as 8JJJfrfrt65K which is a variety of lower and upper case characters and numbers. Since it’s not required to remember them yourself, be as obscure as you like. A word of warning : don’t use dictionary phrases as your password, as these are effortless to identify for hackers.
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