One of the most difficult thing for me is getting started - whatever the activity is. For the discovery exercise on Thing 11, this is what I want to share - how do you keep usernames and passwords safe and easily accessible. I want to ask fellow MCPV bloggers, how do you keep your passwords organized? With all the accounts were signing up, it's hard to keep up with which password I used for what account. Right now, I am just storing them in excel in my H drive in our MCPV account. How do you manage yours? Maybe Google Docs is the answer.
7 comments:
You raise an important issue. The plethora of usernames and passwords is definitely a big hassle. Figuring out a good way to manage this has been on my "to do" list for far too long. In any case, I would advise against using GDocs for this purpose. In fact, I would not post any sensitive info or docs to GDocs. Just not secure enough. The service is very good for a simple file transfer/storage or collaboration of non-sensitive docs.
To solve the username/password management problem, one application I've read positive things about (but still have not tried myself) is . Would be interested to hear if anyone has tried it or has other suggestions.
Great job on posting your document and sharing. I also find keeping track of numerous passwords very annoying, however I agree with Darren about not using Google Docs for this purpose. What has worked for me is to simply limit the variations of passwords that I use. For example, I have three different usernames and passwords that I use regularly so I know that it is going to be at least one of them. By doing this, I do not ever feel the need to write down my account information and risk having it discovered.
I struggle with the name and password element as well. And then run into even more problems between home and work accounts - trying to remember who I was when I signed up. But recently I have been trying to use just slight variations of the password so I can usually get to it after 2 or 3 attempts. Great question and great forum for feedback/new ideas.
To Mary, Darren, & Eileen, thanks for your tips. I got into a lengthier discussion with Mary about this and I like her idea which is similar to Eileen's, to limit the variations of passwords. I looked at keepass, Darren and when I saw that there will be downloading involved, it just turned me off. However, let me know once you have tried it, if it's something that's worth investing our time in.
I use the same strategy as Mary -- I have a limted number of passwords and I use variations on them. To keep things more organized, I have a work password for Marymount, a password for all my UIUC apps, and a few passwords for public sites like Google. I'm also careful to keep my email and password for Amazon, where I have credit card data and a work account, different from any other account.
Another tip when choosing your password is to include a number or symbol within the word. It makes it more secure, and also alleviates the problem of having to come up with yet another password when you register at a website that already has this number/symbol requirement
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