Have You Forgotten That Password
For Some Obscure Site?
Perhaps because
of a long history in the IT industry (now called ICT, by the way), I
almost always use a different password for every different use. It
might be paranoia, but many years ago in the bulletin board days, an
enterprising young teenager set up a new BBS and invited everyone to
join.
Many did, using the same details as they used on their existing
favourite BBS. The enterprising young teenager then used those
details to log on to the original BBS systems. While I am unaware of
any financial losses, quite a few people suffered loss of reputation
when bogus messages were posted from their accounts!
For this reason,
I always assume that any password I give to a system could be tried on
another system by an unscrupulous operator, so make sure that any
critical password is used in only one place. This of course, means that
I have dozens of different passwords to remember. My long term solution
has been to record them in an encrypted Excel spreadsheet where all I
have to remember is the master decryption key. This works, but can be a
real pain.
Then, about six
months ago, John Saxon put me onto RoboForm from http://www.roboform.com/ or most
decent software distribution sites. Once installed,
if a password dialog box pops up, RoboForm invites me to save the
password. If
I accept, next time I visit that site, RoboForm
pops up a window with
the option to fill the form and go! Much more convenient than opening
my spreadsheet and cut and pasting username and password.
There are a few
cautions:
- the free RoboForm has some limitations and some of the features
stop working after 30 days (but it is still very useful if, like me,
you do not like paying for software)
- you can encrypt all your passwords with a master key, in case
your computer gets stolen etc, but the paranoia in me means that I will
not use it for things like internet banking - there is no guarantee
that it does not "phone home" with your information now and again.
I am currently
running version 6.6 something and ignore the "new version is available"
messages that I get every now and again. I have
recently come across AIRoboForm 4.6.8 (last uncrippled freeware version) at
http://www.321download.com/LastFreeware/downloads321/AiRoboForm.zip
but have not yet
tried whether it is as good as my version 6.6.x.
For those who
like freeware, this site
http://www.321download.com/LastFreeware/
is a gem for finding those early unlimited versions.
I find RoboForm
invaluable for things like the ACT Library system where I can never
remember the library number barcode, and recommend it to anyone.
Allan Mikkelsen 13
July 2006
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