On today’s internet there are numerous people that want your username and password from simple curiosity, to pranks to identity theft.  A weak password is a key to a kingdom.  I have dozens if not hundreds of passwords and I can’t remember them all.   Then include personal, business and client related passwords. As for the candy thing  read on….Read More Below...

To have a solid password you want something that hard to guess even for a computer.  Dictionary words, name, and birthdays are all terrible passwords.  The BEST passwords have a mix of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers  and even symbols.  They also have a bit of length to them.  A 3 character numeric password has 1000 combinations which takes a computer almost nothing to crack.   Add letters to that and you get over 46,000 combinations add case you get over 230,000 combinations.  Increase the number of characters to 4 and you’ve got over 14 million combinations and 7 characters easily gives you over 3 trillion combinations.  A bit of security through obscurity.

Granted this may seem really secure there is another thing to do with your  passwords is change them frequently.  Maybe not everyday but once a month is a good rule of thumb.

Don’t write your passwords down.  If you loose the paper you’re in A LOT of trouble.    Not only will you not remember your passwords someone else could have them.

Finally don’t accept candy for your password.   A brief survey showed that many people will give up their passwords for chocolate.  This goes to show that the security system isn’t usually  the problem it’s the people.  Saying a password in a cube farm faxing or emailing it.   if you MUST share your password change it.   So when the chocolate comes round, keep quiet!

What now about remembering all those passwords when you’re not supposed to write them down.   I use a program called RoboForm.  It’s a application and browser plugin that works on many  Browser, Windows Mobile, Palm, Symbian.  There’s a version for thumbdrives that lets you carry your passwords around.

It will let you generate random passwords for logins and even fill out login and address forms.  It can capture your logins as you submit them and recall them at a later time saving you remebering and typing.  You can even store your credit card info inside RoboForm.

Now comes the question about what happens if someone gets a hold of your RoboForm data. or your computer.  Roboform encrypts all data with a master password and provides a non keyboard entry mechanism.   It also avoids simply stuffing the keyboard buffer which can be read by most key loggers.   This effectively prevents most attempts at stealing passwords.  Granted if you have some malware on your computer (you do scan for that don’t you?) it could be compromised but for the most part you are safe.

They have a free version for a limited amount of passwords while the pay version is unlimited.  There is no popup ads or anything of the sort in the program.

The company is a breath of fresh air as they not only provide free updates for registered users their support is personal and responsive.  Check out Roboform.