4 Ways to Improve Your Password Management and Stay Secure
January 10th, 2008 (4:00pm) Samuel Dean 20 Comments
If you’re like me, your list of passwords for both personal- and work-related sites and applications has ballooned in size and calls for management. Even worse, if you’re like a lot of people your password collection may be so large that you’ve developed bad habits. It’s very common, for example, for people to respond to the problem of password list bloat by using the same passwords over and over at numberous sites–a security no-no. Or, even in the cases of very tech-savvy people, it’s not uncommon for passwords to be stored on a business card in, say, a wallet–also a no-no. In this post, I’ll round up some free, easy-to-access password management utilities, including choices for Windows and Mac users.
PassKeeper (see above) is my application of choice for storing and managing passwords. The footprint of the program is only 85K, it’s fast to get in and out of, and it encrypts my password records. You can name your stored account login information anything you want, but I find the handiest solution is to name my logins according to the sites they pertain to, such as WordPress for my WordPress.com login information. After that, it’s a one-click step to do a login.
Password management utilities are ideal applications to keep on a USB thumb drive, so that you can have your information available whereever you are. If you’re on the hunt for an extremely compact password manager to store on a thumb drive, Passpack is the tiniest one I know of, with a footprint of only 15K.
The two programs above are Windows applications. What if you use the Mac? CiphSafe is a free, simple Mac OS X password manager, and it uses 320-bit Blowfish encryption, so you won’t lose your information. Like PassKeeper, it has a very simple interface and is quick to get in and out of.
What if you want to go beyond simple password management? RoboForm is an excellent application for storing and managing passwords, but it also excels at filling out forms for you. You can store a filled-out form containing your personal information as an Identity file and have it automatically entered when you need to register at a site. RoboForm is free to try but costs $29.95 if you like it. Note that there is also a RoboForm2Go application if you want to store RoboForm on a USB drive.
How do you store and manage your passwords?
20 Comments Post your own comment
Carlos says: January 10th, 2008 5:07pm
Hi Samuel,
In Linux, I use Revelation (http://oss.codepoet.no/revelation/) for most passwords. Passwords for ftp sites, wireless networks, email through evolution, etc, are stored in a central location by SeaHorse (at least in Gnome), which is accessed with a single password.
Cheers
Judi Sohn says: January 10th, 2008 5:10pm
For the Mac, I think 1Password is a winner. Very secure, easy to use and reliable.
Andrew says: January 10th, 2008 6:47pm
I have used Roboform for years and love it. It will even generate random passwords for you.
A security guy at an electric company told me that over 50% of the passwords were either ‘password’ or ‘jesus’.
Bassam says: January 10th, 2008 8:02pm
I use KeePass for storing my passwords. It’s open source, and is on Windows and on Mac (KeePassX on the Mac).
Since I work on a PC and play on a Mac, this is a very useful little program. I keep my passwords database on a USB thumb drive for maximum cross-platform goodness.
Brad C says: January 10th, 2008 11:17pm
I also use KeePass.. It has a great interface!
Andrew says: January 10th, 2008 11:38pm
Yes, KeyPass is a great tool – they even have a “portable” edition on portableapps.com
Joan M. Mas says: January 11th, 2008 12:02am
I also use Keepass and I strongly recommend it, both for its robust features, attractive interface and portability. I run it from a usb drive, so I always have my accounts info near at hand (encrypted under a master password). Of course, I also keep a synchronized copy of the database in two hard disks, so in the emergency of losing the pendrive I’d only have to re-download the opensource KeePass.
Jose says: January 11th, 2008 12:57am
I use Shibbo as an online service for managing passwords. When you enter the passwords, it tells you if the password exists in the common password dictionaries.
Joe says: January 11th, 2008 3:04am
KeePass is my choice as well. At work alone I have about 7 passwords that I have to know and all are required to be in a certain format. KeePass makes it easy for me with a passwrod gererator. Like Joan says, I always keep a back up as well. Safe and sound.
Preston says: January 11th, 2008 5:38am
I use Passguard http://www.passguard.com/ It’s great if you need to get to your passwords from more than one computer. Works on IE and Firefox.
Steve says: January 11th, 2008 5:40am
I used to use KeePass, but have now changed over to the KeePass Portable version as I am constantly moving around between about 10 Win machines (all with USB).
I also keep a copy of the database on my backup external hard drive, off site and updated monthly along with my machine images.
A great program.
--Deb says: January 11th, 2008 7:34am
This is great–and so well timed. I’ve been worrying about this for a couple weeks now because, as you say, the need for passwords has ballooned!
Michael says: January 11th, 2008 10:09am
I use Keynote (the greatest free software in history: http://sourceforge.net/projects/keynote/) to organize just about everything, including passwords. It includes strong encryption.
JT says: January 11th, 2008 10:18am
I also use the portable version of KeePass. Works excellent. I also like the fact that it offers a way to generate strong hard to guess passwords and offers AES encryption.
Davin Peterson says: January 11th, 2008 12:19pm
I used to use PassKeeper until I found Passphrase Keeper.
http://www.swidgets.com/download.htm
John J. says: January 12th, 2008 8:46pm
For years, I’ve been using SplashID for my Palm device. It’s a nicely encrypted program for your Palm which works well for storing passwords, account numbers, memberships, subscriptions, etc. I sync it between my palm, my home and my work computers so I always have my info handy. Check it out at the link below:
http://splashdata.com/splashid/index.asp
Mun says: January 13th, 2008 4:40pm
I’ve been using Password Corral for a few years and find it works well. The UI isn’t as fancy as KeePass, but it’s small and works well. Also doesn’t require installation and can easily run from a USB drive.
Web Worker Daily » Archive Check Your Passwords « says: March 4th, 2008 1:00pm
[...] site, you’ll also want to implement some sort of password-management tool, like the ones we’ve reviewed in the past. The best of these utilities will even generate unique, strong passwords for [...]
Web Worker Daily » Archive PageOnce Offers Internet Account Management « says: June 3rd, 2008 8:07am
[...] Of course, this means you’re trusting PageOnce to keep track of all those logins for you – and to keep them secure. While their “How We Keep You Safe” page lists a number of safeguards, from SSL and encryption to security reviews, their TOS makes it clear that PageOnce assume no liability for anything that might go wrong. For most users, I personally am much more comfortable recommending a client-side password management utility. [...]
Marc says: June 4th, 2008 8:47am
I’ve been using Passwordmaker for years – it has a bit of a learning curve and a couple of areas could be improved but I’m extremely happy with it and would recommand it to anyone who has a little computer knowledge. Comes as a Firefox extension, Opera widget, desktop (windows and MAC) widget, on-line version, etc..
http://passwordmaker.org/