Passwords

[Kerry F]

Is anyone else going crazy with remembering so many passwords for every little thing online?  I can't keep track of them anymore............I am going to do as little online as I can from now on.  Of course calling on the phone can take a while, too, to talk to someone.   I know there are storage places you can keep all your passwords, but I'm looking for a simpler solution.  Maybe I just need to come up with a couple of tough ones and use them for most everything.

[Janiece Young]

You can start a notebook and put them in there. I have a drawer that has them all written down.  I need to transfer them to a small notebook.

[Marge Teilhaber (TILE hobber)]

I keep a file in Word called passwords which I look at many times a week.  who can remember all this stuff?  

I periodically email the latest iteration of this file to myself in gmail just in case but I rarely need it when I'm not home.

[Janiece Young]

Now, Marge, that's a great idea. :-)

[Marge Teilhaber (TILE hobber)]

It's currently 31 pages of stuff that I'd have no way of remembering if not for the file!!    It's got to be at least 10 years old!

[Kerry F]

Marge,

If you email it to your gmail account and someone hacks that account, they'll have all your passwords, won't they?

And what about when I access from my phone?  Then I need to carry the list with me?

[Janiece Young]

Marge, it's super smart to email it to yourself.  I'm going to borrow your idea.  That's much better than my notebook idea.

[Marge Teilhaber (TILE hobber)]

It's one of the many files that I would be lost without and why I back up to 3 external hard drives and Carbonite!

[Janiece Young]

Marge, How do you like Carbonite?  Have you ever had to retrieve anything from Carbonite?

[Marge Teilhaber (TILE hobber)]

BLORNT, I don't think I've ever retrieved anything from Carbonite.  I back up every night to one of the external drives (using Second Copy), so if I ever need something, which is rare (a few times a year maybe), it's much more efficient to get it off one of the drives.    But for $200 for 5 years, I like knowing that Carbonite is there in a pinch.     And it's easy to browse the Carbonite backup by clicking on the Carbonite icon in the lower R corner of taskbar.  It's all there.  I can sleep easy!

[Allison Garrett, CSR, RPR]

I have a low-level password, a medium-level password and a high-level password and choose one of the three depending on the sensitivity of the information.  The medium-level is a longer variation of the low-level with some caps and a special character included.  The high-level password has all kinds of different cases and special characters, but it makes a certain pattern on the keyboard (albeit a complicated one) so it's easier for me to remember even though it's random.  I use that one strictly for financial information.

[Debbie Taggart]

Allison -- great idea.  I usually use a variation on a theme for everything.  I works for me most of the time, but sometimes it takes me forever working through all the "themes" until I get it right.  It would be better to just have three.

[Kerry F]

Allison,

Now that idea I like.  Only have to remember 3 passwords.