What is one of the most dangerous things people do these days? They use one or two passwords for every site that they set up an account for on the internet. They might think that password is secure, but how secure is every site they give it to? A hell of a lot of people use the same password for their primary email account as they do for some random forum they wanted to post on. Dangerous! If someone hacks the forum and gets hold of their password and email, chances are, they’ll try the same combination on every other popular site…. ebay, paypal, online banking. You get the jist.
So if we are to have a different password for every different site, how on earth are we going to remember all these long and secure passwords? The answer is KeePass. This wonderful freeware open source application will keep all your passwords secure. How many times have you forgotten you had an account or had to create a new one because you forgot the password? KeePass will solve this. Moat people fear storing all their passwords in one place, but as long as this place is secure, there is a relatively low chance of anyone getting to the file. Then there’s the fact that the file will be encrypted using AES. This is the same encryption system that US diplomats use. Finally the data stored in memory will also be encrypted to prevent other applications from accessing it.
KeePass is great, not least because it runs on Linux, MacOS and Windows, so you can take your passwords wherever you go. There’s a Blackberry port, android port, mobile Java port and they are even working on an iPhone port too. Any where you go you can take your password file with you and only with the master password can anyone read it. If course you have to remember one really long, strong password, but if you can remember that, all the rest of your accounts are safe.
And KeePass stores more than just passwords. It stores the URLs to websites you have accounts on and also your usernames. You can even add extra notes for each account. This way you can easily keep track of hundreds of accounts and give each one a different password. The password can be something you’d never be able to remember. The built in copy paste system allows you to transfer these passwords securely when needed without having to type them in, thus avoiding keyloggers.
Of course, no system is without its cons. Keeping your passwords all i one place would increase the danger should someone get hold of your password database along with your master password. But I am very much of the opinion that this would be much harder to do than to hack a small time forum you’ve used the same password as on other sites for. Security is only as strong as the weakest link. Make sure you have decent antivirus and spyware apps. Make sure you avoid using internet explorer and preferably windows if you can. If you follow simple common sense rules, KeePass should help organise your accounts and allow you to implement a more secure password regime.
You can download KeePass here.
