It's password-changing time
Ever since getting hacked, I've become more diligent about security. One of the easiest ways to help protect yourself is to remember to change your passwords (both on websites and on your computers) every 45 or 90 days. Here at work, our IT department instituted a more secure password policy that requires domain users to change their passwords every 90 days. Since I log into the domain every day, I see the "You have 10 days until your password expires" message when the time to change is drawing near. I decided to use this as a reminder to change my passwords - and I'll make it your reminder too!
If you're anything like me, one of the issues with changing all of your passwords is that there is just so many! I was thinking to myself, "Self, how can I keep track of all of the places I need to change my passwords?." Then it came to me - keep a tally! I set up an Excel spreadsheet (Excel example | pdf example) broken down into categories of the places I need to change my password at.
Of course, the first time through is going to be the hardest, especially since you probably can't remember (read: I can't, so you shouldn't be able to either) every website with a password. Build up the list as you go, and next time it should be simple! Just remember to add a new line for each new password when you create it, that way your list stays as up-to-date as possible.
If you need a good online password generator, I like to use the Secure Password Generator. Set the settings to whatever your password requirements are (I don't like the "no similar characters" setting) and generate away. I like to set it to 50 and read through them. It took me about 10 minutes until I found a password that I liked - lots of different characters but something I will be able to easily remember.
Let me know what you think and if this idea will help you out any - I know it will me!
Edit: As Josh was reviewing the first revision of this article, his first question was, "Have you heard of KeePass" to which I responded, "Yes, I have." In fact, I use it (it can be installed on a usb drive), but my method doesn't store passwords, just reminds you which ones to change. Still, it's a great piece of software!
Edit Edit: Reposted at Daily Cup of Tech - thanks for the link!
Photo by Bruno Santos
