Getting Organazized, Step 3: Passwords

In the last couple of months, I’ve gotten my organize on.

I set up an automated backup system that copies all my important stuff either offsite or to another server.

And I installed and am actually USING Subversion on a daily basis.

I was feeling pretty good about myself. Pretty secure. Then I saw Eddie Awad’s post about Password Overload. Yeah, that was a good one. I had so many accounts on various sites, networks, banks, etc. It’s impossible to remember all of them. I had a sort of system with about four different base passwords that I could combine in multiple ways, so even if I forgot a particular one for a specific site, I could usually suss it out by trial and error. But it’s far from secure, and sometimes you get these default passwords that you can’t change. I eventually implemented a locked page in OneNote, that just listed them all. But that was kind of a pain too. Eddie linked to KeePass, which is free and does what it needs to. I started entering everything and without straining, I was up to about 30 passwords. Over the next couple days I kept saying, “Oh, yeah, there’s another one,” and adding that. I’m up to almost 50 now!!! Oh, and yeah, I added my KeePass database to my backup set, so that’s all nice and secure too. Maybe now I’ll go in and generate some really random ones with the program and feel really safe.