If you’re like me, your list of passwords for both personal- and work-related sites and applications has ballooned in size and calls for management. Even worse, if you’re like a lot of people your password collection may be so large that you’ve developed bad habits. It’s very common, for example, for people to respond to the problem of password list bloat by using the same passwords over and over at numberous sites–a security no-no. Or, even in the cases of very tech-savvy people, it’s not uncommon for passwords to be stored on a business card in, say, a wallet–also a no-no. In this post, I’ll round up some free, easy-to-access password management utilities, including choices for Windows and Mac users.

PassKeeper (see above) is my application of choice for storing and managing passwords. The footprint of the program is only 85K, it’s fast to get in and out of, and it encrypts my password records. You can name your stored account login information anything you want, but I find the handiest solution is to name my logins according to the sites they pertain to, such as WordPress for my WordPress.com login information. After that, it’s a one-click step to do a login.
Password management utilities are ideal applications to keep on a USB thumb drive, so that you can have your information available whereever you are. If you’re on the hunt for an extremely compact password manager to store on a thumb drive, Passpack is the tiniest one I know of, with a footprint of only 15K.
The two programs above are Windows applications. What if you use the Mac? CiphSafe is a free, simple Mac OS X password manager, and it uses 320-bit Blowfish encryption, so you won’t lose your information. Like PassKeeper, it has a very simple interface and is quick to get in and out of.
What if you want to go beyond simple password management? RoboForm is an excellent application for storing and managing passwords, but it also excels at filling out forms for you. You can store a filled-out form containing your personal information as an Identity file and have it automatically entered when you need to register at a site. RoboForm is free to try but costs $29.95 if you like it. Note that there is also a RoboForm2Go application if you want to store RoboForm on a USB drive.
How do you store and manage your passwords?
{"source":"https:\/\/gigaom.com\/2008\/01\/10\/4-ways-to-improve-your-password-management-and-stay-secure\/wijax\/49e8740702c6da9341d50357217fb629","varname":"wijax_1c5e2d4791eb59c5ba212a0976714412","title_element":"header","title_class":"widget-title","title_before":"%3Cheader%20class%3D%22widget-title%22%3E","title_after":"%3C%2Fheader%3E"}