Passwords…how many do you have? Ebay, Email, Paypal, Bill Pay, Internet Forums, Software Registration, Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, on and on. Too many passwords. My first password was to Compuserve. For years is was on a small piece of paper kept in my dictionary. Now I have literally hundreds of passwords. Most people keep their passwords on pieces of paper under their keyboard or mousepad. Not very secure, or convenient to find.
In 1995 Ziff Davis gave out a free password keeper sofware program called ZD Net’s Password Pro on a floppy disk attached to their magazines. It is a nice and simple little program that I have been using for the past 16 years to store all my passwords. Unfortunately this program hasn’t been updated in many years and doesn’t seem to work well with versions of Windows from Vista on. It is also a little too simple and limiting. Today I recommend a neat little program called KeePass.
KeePass is freeware. I like free software, especially free software that does everything I want. KeePass is a little more complicated than my trusty old Password Pro software but easy enough that most anyone will be able to use without ever even looking at the help file. All your passwords will be stored in an encrypted database that can’t be accessed without your master password. One password is all you need to remember.
There are versions of KeePass for just about every operating system: Windows (all versions), Mac OS X, iPhone/iPad, Android, BlackBerry, PalmOS, J2ME, Linux and more. KeePass is also portable so that you can run it from a USB stick if you want. There are even many plugins to extend this program beyond simple password storage. You can integrate KeePass with Firefox or Chrome web browsers or even synchronize your password database with many computers using Dropbox.
Identity thief is a huge problem. Don’t make it easy for thieves by leaving your passwords out where they can be found. Lock them up and never lose a password again with this simple free download.
