How to EASILY remember all of those passwords!
Chris Hogan, 1st September 2017, Gadget
Every day we hear about another computer hacking scandal and are urged never to use the same password for any of our websites and services but …. that could be hundreds! How can you remember them all?
It is a problem. With banking, credit cards and payment system accounts (like PayPal) you can easily have up to ten passwords on the go, and they are the most critical ones to keep different. Add in utilities and services like electricity, TV, broadband and most people are quickly up to twenty or thirty.
Then every social media site and shopping site wants a password, and every forum you use - it's a nightmare. Yet we know the web is a dangerous place, and that having different passwords for everything is an important step in protecting ourselves from identify thieves.
Password managers
One solution is a password manager - an online tool, usually one that plugs into your browser, that stores all your passwords. You can put the passwords in yourself or allow the manager to learn the passwords as you use each website or service.
Once they're stored you can look them up manually or allow the manager to recognise a website and put the correct password in automatically. Many will also have a menu of sites to choose from so you can use that as your main navigation tool. Simply look up the site you want to log into using the password manager's menu and it'll take you to the site and log you straight in.
Other features
There are a lot of password managers on the market, some free, some paid for, and others where there's a free version with limitations (or adverts) and a paid version that removes the limitations or ads.
Some password managers will warn you if the password you've chosen is too weak. Many of us accept weak passwords because they're easier to remember, but if you're using a password manager to remember them for you, you can go all out with weird characters to make your passwords harder to crack.
Which one to use?
Our personal favourites password manager is LastPass 4.0 Premium which has a strong feature list. From the free ones we like LogMeOnce Password Management Suite Premium 5.2, which is considerably better than some of the ones you have to pay for.
There are two excellent and very informative articles on PC Magazine's UK website that take you through more in-depth reviews of the main password managers on the market - one looks at the free offerings and the other at those that you pay for.
We would highly recommend taking a look at those articles to find a password manager that suits your needs.
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