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Making Your Passwords More Secure

If you are like me, you are constantly creating new accounts online.  You've probably done one of the following to try to remember your passwords:

• Use the same password everywhere.
• Have a handful of passwords that you use based on how much you trust your site. Ex: One for your bank accounts, one for your ecommerce account and one throw away for random accounts.
• You have a method to create semi-unique passwords based off each site.

With these methods, you run into several issues.  What happens when you need to update a password?  What if one is compromised?  I was frustrated with these systems and started searching for a better solution.

I stumbled upon Joel's Password Management Scheme and decided to implement it.  I did switch the application to one that works better for multiple computers.  Here's how it works:

1. Download and Install KeePass Password Safe
2. Create a database, set a master password and start creating keys with unique passwords for each web site you use.
3. If you use multiple computers, use Dropbox and save your password database file in your Dropbox.  This means each time you save your database it will be synced to your Dropbox and all your computers.  When you save, you can merge the changes as well so you don't have to worry about overwriting your changes.
4. If you aren't using multiple computers and don't want to use Dropbox, make sure you backup your database.  See my article on online backup solutions.

This may seem like a lot of work, but once you get use to it's not much harder to use and it is more secure.  You also don't need to use the password reminder tool on the sites you visit occasionally.