Keep Your Passwords!
You have a password for the online banking, one for your Apple ID, one to log into your retirement amount. Your password for your bank has to have have at least one numeric number, but can’t start with a number and it can’t have any more than two of the same characters found in your username. Your retirement account must include at least 3 numbers and one special character but they can’t be consecutive.
Does this sound familiar? In the perfect world we would only need one password, but unfortunately for security purposes and as hackers get better at what they do password strength has become critical and part of our everyday lives. The hassle with this is that most sites have their own sets of rules for password strength leaving many of us to peck away at our keyboards or devices in a sometimes endless game of “remember how you manipulated your favorite password 16 different ways and can’t remember if your banking site used the password with the capitalization or the one with the ampersand”.
For a very long time I will admit my method of keeping track of my usernames and passwords was the stickies program on my Mac, much to the dismay of our IT manager! While stickies are easily accessed they are not secure and I do not recommend this method. Where you should keep them is in your keychain. You can access your keychain through applications and then utilities. Once you are in your keychain you can manually add preferred sites, accounts and passwords you wish to store. Another huge benefit is secure notes. Secure notes allow you store additional confidential information. Keychain is safe and secure because in order to view any of the passwords stored there you need to enter your administrator password. Within keychain you can make sure to safely and securely keep your passwords, and when you forget if you needed that capitalization or ampersand in your password you can simply open keychain and enter into the search field the website for which you need to confirm the password.
Now what if you don’t have a mac? The loss of passwords, and most often your Apple ID password is a huge concern with users of iOS devices only. Luckily there is an easy solution for that, iCloud and iCloud keychain. Simply go to settings, iCloud and then select keychain. Your iOS device will begin to store your logins and websites. Additionally you can add specific websites and passwords manually to your phone or iPad under safari and then selecting passwords. This is also where you would look if you can’t remember login information.
Recording safely your logins and passwords is an often overlooked step, especially when users of iOS devices accidentally have the device damaged or lost. Saving your passwords safely and using iCloud keychain can avert your being logged out of accounts.
Look for a tiny picture of a padlock in the bottom right hand corner of the page you are on. Another way to tell if a site is secure is the web address. Sites with a web address that begins with https let you know the site is secure. Make sure your operating system stays up to date and your firewall is active.