My latest obsession I must evangelize about – and have been doing a lot of lately, is about the importance of having a password manager or password safe in which you manage your passwords. Why? How many accounts do you manage? It’s likely more than you realize. We are in an undeclared cyber war with several countries (such as North Korea) and terrorist organizations. With over 1/3 of Americans now employed by the government, our overseas enemies wish to gather intel any way they can – and if that means hacking into your account, they will try it.
A mere mortal cannot memorize several different passwords that meet secure password criteria. If you’re like most people, you use the same password (including some possible variants) for every site/account you access. You may think, “heck, what’s the worst that could happen if someone hacked into my eHarmony account?” Well… if you use the same password for that account that you use for PayPal – guess what’s gonna happen next? The person that hacked into a website you’re not too worried about and will now try that same e-mail you use with every online account they can find.
Let your imagination go wild on that one for a minute. I will wait here while you change your underwear.
That’s where a password management schema comes in. I started using 1Password (version 5) a few months ago and I am sold on it. If you tried it in the past, they have worked out the major bugs and annoyances – and the big draw to me is that it works on Android, iPhone, Windows and Mac. There are a few cross platform choices out there, but for now they are slim – and this one is not dependent on a website to retrieve.
I’m such a big fan of 1Password, as a matter of fact, I am in the process of creating a course on Udemy.com on how to use it on a smartphone and desktop. I will be giving followers of this blog exclusive free access to that course when it goes live – but you’ll need to comment below and your comment will need to be dated BEFORE the course goes live. 🙂
