Tech Tip–Protect Your Passwords

June 9, 2009 by Chris · Comments Off
Filed under: Tech Tip

Today’s tech tip is about protecting yourself. While the Internet is a great place to visit, it’s not place to encourage identity theft, credit card fraud, spam, among other nasties. It’s about being safe online when it comes to your passwords.

It gets frustrating, I know. You sign up for forums, you get a password. You buy something online, you get a password. You set up a blog, you get a password. None of us are super human. With all those sites and all those passwords, it’s easy to fall into ruts. Using the same password across the board is one of those to-be-avoided ruts.

Many workplaces make employees change passwords at some designated time frame. Some even control the creation or re-use of passwords. When was the last time you made a conscious choice to change a password? I’m not talking about forgetting one and having to reset it. As a general practice, we don’t do it.

For a couple years now I’ve been using a program called LastPass, first as a Firefox extension then as a program. You create one master password. LastPass takes care of the rest. The extension is about to detect password fields on web pages. It will offer to create a password. This is where it really shines. Most of the time, I may create a password of six, maybe eight characters. With LastPass, I can generate that ultra-secure, 18-character password that I won’t have to remember. It does it for me.

Don’t fret: you can view your sites if necessary. You can also synchronize your passwords across browsers. You can also use one-time passwords. LastPass also comes with a premium version that includes mobile applications and priority support.

Whatever level of protection you use, protect your online presence. Using a system of unique passwords will go a long way to protecting your identity, your credit cards, and your security.

Tags: Internet, Internet security, passwords