I spend a fair amount of time with clients resetting passwords, removing them from fire walls etc cause they have forgotten the password they used.
With todays electronic society it is unrealistic to try and remember all different passwords for everything so we just create one and use it for everything - this though creates a serious security risk, lets say someone gains access to your email password, with that they can look at emails coming in see who you are using - do password recovery on these companies and within hours have stolen your identity and maybe some of your money. Of course they need to gain the password first - I have a very secure password I hear you say but if you use it for everything then that shopping site you signed up to last year was hacked and they now have your password.
You are not alone, I deal with hundreds of clients each year that tend to use the same passwords for everything creating a serious security issue for themselves.
What is the answer ? Well I usually recommend a small program called roboform (
www.roboform.com) it integrates seamlessly with IE and Firefox, when you first sign up with a new site you can create a weird and wonderful password that you have no chance of remembering but Roboform will - you save this and the next time you visit the site you click the roboform link and it inserts all the details for you. This way you can create secure passwords for every site.
It is also a great anti phishing tool - because we never ever click links we are not supposed to do we - yes of course we do but if you click that paypal link and roboform does not give you the option to log in then you need to check that link as its not as thick as you are and has recognised the url is not the one you log into.
I have been using this program for about 9 years - it is a lifetime purchase and there is even a small free trial, meaning once purchased it is updated free of charge for life. I currently have around 30k passwords saved in this program and I simply could not function without it.
I hear you say - I use auto save on IE or other - great it does allow you to be more secure with passes, but roboform can be encrypted and it is also transportable in that you can move your whole password list from one machine to another when you upgrade, in fact there is also a usb drive version.
The only downside i have found is sites that use Flash forms for login pages Roboform cannot read these so need to be inserted manually
Anyway if you want to tighten up your security a bit have a look - this is not an affiliate link just a view of a happy user
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