Everyone knows just how important passwords are in today’s interconnected world. After all, with just one password, you can often access online accounts that manage almost all of your personal, financial, and professional information. Just think about what could potentially happen if someone untrustworthy, or worse your younger sibling, managed to access your passwords. It would be pretty much total chaos right?
Well, keeping your passwords safe doesn’t need to be all that difficult a task, particularly if you follow these guidelines.
- Memorize. Perhaps the single best way available for keeping your passwords safe is to memorize them. By memorizing your passwords you can practically guarantee that no one else can stumble across them. While this is the most secure of all methods, it can create a bit of a problem if you happen to forget the password to a specific account.
- Multiple passwords. While it is easier to remember a password if you only use one, maybe two, this isn’t exactly the most secure method. Ideally you should have a different password for each and every account that requires one. Be creative when creating your passwords, but make sure that they are something that you can easily remember.
- Notebook. Not everyone has a perfect memory, which can make trying to memorize all of their different passwords more than a little difficult. If you find yourself among this group you may want to consider writing the passwords down. Keep in mind that you will definitely need to either keep the notebook with you at all times, or secure it in some other manner. Otherwise, anyone can come around and find your passwords and access your accounts.
- The browser. Many web browsers have the ability to remember any passwords that you enter into it. Most, if not all, of these browsers will also ask you whether you would like the browser to do that or not. If you are using a password-protected computer, which only use have regular access to, this is a pretty good option. Basically, by utilizing this option you won’t ever have to worry about remembering your passwords. That being said, if you do try to access your accounts via a different computer, you will have to remember the passwords then.
- Know your programs. Programs are becoming more and more sophisticated as time goes by, and this can give you some rather interesting options. There are programs commercially available which will allow you to create a single master password that will tie in to whatever other programs you need. However, depending on the sophistication and security level you want you can end up spending quite a bit of money.
Remember that these are only a few of the guidelines, and methods, available to you for keeping your passwords safe. There are literally as many different ways that you can secure your passwords as there are people in the world. That being said, you need to keep in mind that the only way to really and truly keep your passwords safe is to make sure that you are the only one that has access to them.
