It’s really quite amazing how many times each day you are asked to enter a password to access a particular solution, software as a service, file, membership site and so on. In fact, if you’re actively involved online each day the chances are you have upwards of 30 or 40 different logins, each of which really should have its own very distinct and hard to guess password. Yet human nature being what it is we all like to take the path of least resistance. We really can’t imagine trying to create 35 or 40 alphanumeric passwords with additional characters, upper and lowercase letters and so on. We would just have to write them down somewhere and then we would be stuck trying to find a piece of paper whenever it’s time to log in again.
As sad as it is to say there are people out there who get a great deal of pleasure out of trying to hack people’s passwords. Sometimes they can access financial sites and steal money. Other times they can access your e-mail lists and send spam to all your contacts. This is much more common than you might think. After all, if you do tend to use the same login details everywhere, hackers will go to sites that have typically poor security parameters, such as online forums and gain access to passwords there. Then, it may be as simple as using the exact same details to gain access to other, much more important sites.
The good news is that you don’t have to risk all of this, nor do you have to magically remember all of those crazy pass codes. There are a number of solutions online that also enable you to share your passwords with other members of your team.
Pass Pack now makes it possible for you to share secured passwords by using encryption. This is a handy addition to its own online desktop password manager. Here, all of your login details will be stored and automatically loaded whenever you visit the relevant URL. Your passwords can be synced using industry-standard encryption known as AES256.
It may be tempting to send login details including your password to a member of your outsourced team or Virtual Assistant via e-mail. How much of a risk can this be? The answer is it can be a significant risk. Once again, remember that this is especially so if you tend to use the same password across multiple sites including those that are extremely sensitive.
You should always ensure that the solution you use does all the encryption locally before it is sent across to this service and that the industry-standard cryptography algorithm is used. You certainly need to make sure that you remember your master password and of course this should never be something straightforward or guessable.
Many of the password managers are free up to a certain number of stored login details and thereafter are available for a small fee. This fee should be well worth your consideration, especially bearing in mind the number of unscrupulous people around these days.
Have you used a password manager before? If so, we’d love to read your comments.