How do you keep track of all your passwords?

hardpressed

We're told not to use the same password for different accounts but how do you remember them all if your not supposed to write them down. Anybody got a fail safe method. At the moment I'm tearing my hair our because I can't remember a vital password, it's for a saving account, I've been trying to phone them to get a replacement but the phone is constantly engaged.

Millionaire

hardpressed wrote: »

We're told not to use the same password for different accounts but how do you remember them all if your not supposed to write them down. Anybody got a fail safe method. At the moment I'm tearing my hair our because I can't remember a vital password, it's for a saving account, I've been trying to phone them to get a replacement but the phone is constantly engaged.

You can get encryption software where you can store passwords on and other confidential details and you just have to remeber main password.

I personally just remember all of mine by writing them down in code so only i know what they are and what they are for;)

albertross_2

https://www.steganos.com/us/products/home-office/locknote/overview/

one file, one password, strong encryption, portable

Networkguy

Assuming this is for your home PC, write them down on a bit of paper.

People always assume that you can't write passwords down which is nonsense. What you need to do is make sure that people can't guess them or gain access to them.

By example, I am pretty sure most people are very carefull not to let anybody else know their credit card number yet if you think about it, the number is printed onto a handy sized bit of plastic for you to carry around with you. But you take care to keep that bit of plastic safe.

So instead of using fancy software, write your password down on a bit of paper and then put that bit of paper in your wallet (next to your credit card) for safe keeping.

sra

An interesting method using a bookmarklet here.

Little_John

I use a bank of 3 or 4 different words for almost all my passwords and and use various combinations with upper and lowercase and a relatives date of birth.

superscaper

Completely hypocritical as I haven't done this myself but am considering it, but was reading about creating a password rule set. So you just have to remember your personal rule for creating passwords based on the url of the site and mashing it with some base password. Then you're essentially able to have a unique password for every site without actually having to specifically remember each password.
http://lifehacker.com/software/passwords/geek-to-live--choose-and-remember-great-passwords-184773.php

b33r

superscaper wrote: »

Completely hypocritical as I haven't done this myself but am considering it, but was reading about creating a password rule set. So you just have to remember your personal rule for creating passwords based on the url of the site and mashing it with some base password. Then you're essentially able to have a unique password for every site without actually having to specifically remember each password.
http://lifehacker.com/software/passwords/geek-to-live--choose-and-remember-great-passwords-184773.php

Very good article that.

I tend to use the same password (it's still a complicated one) for a lot of things which wouldn't be disasterous if someone got into, like forums for example but then have a few different master passwords for online banking and my main mail account which I change every now and again. I use the firefox thing to remember a lot of my passwords with a master password on just to make signing into things easier but it doesnt work with online banking etc.

unrich

piece of cardboard with three columns, site, email password.

Mercenary

Truecrypt and/or Passwordsafe

and a USB key with a Truecrypt partition on it for portability.

One backs the other up in case of system failure

susan1

a manky bit of scrap paper under the key board:D