A place for all those passwords
If you’re like me, you access most of your financial information online, which means that you probably have a large number of user names and passwords to keep track of. And each financial institution has its own requirement for what constitutes an acceptable user name and password. Then there are the security questions… It got to be pretty silly for me — I would frequently lock myself out of accounts or have to reset passwords because I couldn’t remember the correct user name & password combination for that particular account. (I pretty much had to reset my American Express information every single time I tried to view my statement, for example.) My husband did some searching and found a solution: Steganos LockNote.
LockNote is a (free!) little program that encrypts a notepad file. It’s very easy to use, and I’m loving it so far. Now whenever I access anything that requires a user name or password, I input the information into the encrypted file at the same time. This will eventually give me a comprehensive (and completely updated) list of all my access information. This kind of thing is also helpful if someone else ever needs to handle your finances for you — they’ll just need one password for access to all of the information.
June 1st, 2007 at 2:13 pm
I do the same thing with Excel. You can save the file with a password on it. Inside it is a table with the URL of the site and the login page, my userid and password for that site, and info about what I do there. For instance, bills i have to pay manually online are all grouped together and list the day of month it is due.
I keep this Excel doc on a flash drive that is on my keychain.
In case you were wondering, Excel files with passwords are encrypted.
June 1st, 2007 at 8:53 pm
Thanks for the link. I downloaded it & like it a lot already! :)
June 2nd, 2007 at 2:09 am
Just so you know: Excel files can be cracked within an hour. The solution Microsoft offers to “protect” its files is very cheap and I don’t recommend using it to anyone! Something like Steganos is 100% secure and much more efficient. Steganos lets people have a look at the source code of Locknote so if you know a little about programing, you can easily tell that there is no backdoor and that the encryption algorithm is secure!
You should also have another look at what Steganos has to offer! Nice tools!
June 2nd, 2007 at 12:18 pm
I use Roboform (www.roboform.com) which is free for limited use, and very secure.
June 3rd, 2007 at 1:15 pm
Hi. Welcome to the world of password management!
If you travel a lot (or even just sometimes) you might want to look into an online solution.
I’m a founding partner at PassPack, which is – you guessed it – a free online password manager, so you don’t need to download anything to give it a try.
I’ve written an post on the company blog comparing online vs. offline solutions:
http://passpack.wordpress.com/2007/01/29/online-vs-offline-password-managers/
I hope you find it useful. Kudos to you for getting your passwords locked up and packed away!
Cheers,
Tara
PassPack founding partner