Protect your passwords

You are as member of my different internet sites, you need passwords to log into them all, do you:

• Use the same password for all your sites so that you remember it easily.
• Use a range of passwords for different types of program.
• Keep them all listed in a spreadsheet.

Those are some of the most popular methods, however none of them are very effective, if you use the first one, once someone knows one password, they know them all.

The second is similar, slightly better but still not very effective.

The third better again, but if someone manages to hack into your system, still open for all to see, even if they are password protacted, they are easily cracked, there a many softwares available to do this.

An even better option is to download a secure database program such as KeePass, this free open source program will allow you to keep your passwords in a secure, encrypted database that only needs one password to open, if you dont have the correct password it is extremely difficult to open.

Once again though if someone manages to hack into your system you are open to having it stolen.

There is one more level of security that I add into mine, KeePass has a portable installer option, that is downloaded to a datastick and the database created on the datastick. That is only connected to my computer when I need to use it.

Another advantage of using this method is if you use several different computers, all you need to do is plug in the datastick and you have access to all of your passwords instantly. The size on my datastick is just over 4Mb, so you can see this is not a big program.