Locking up your keys

I was once astounded to see a small notebook in my friend’s home with ‘Passwords’ in bold scrawled across the cover.

He had one page each for emails, messengers, online storage service and – hold your breath – bank accounts, complete with the user ID. He also had a full page with details about ATM and credit cards, along with their PIN numbers.

The details in the notebook were for the entire family, along with their names and phone numbers. He prided himself on being very organised. He had also uploaded a version to his Dropbox account “for safety”

Now, wasn’t it stupid of him to do this? What if someone stole the notebook? “I have it on Dropbox,” he said without batting an eyelid. It didn’t occur to him that all one had to get access to the notebook to wipe him off financially.

In all his madness, he was at least doing one correct thing: He had separate passwords for every account and service. No two passwords were the same.

But my friend is not an isolated example. Most of us have accounts in scores of sites and it is almost impossible to remember them all.

Fortunately, there are several software and apps, most of them free, that help us with creating and remembering them.

Solutions

One of the oldest and most trusted is KeePass.

Setting it up is easy: In KeePass’ own words: “The very first step is creating a new password database. KeePass will store all your passwords in such a database. To create one, click 'File - New...' in the main menu or click the leftmost toolbar button. A window will appear and prompts you for a master password and/or key file. The database will be encrypted with the password you enter here. Also, the password you enter here will be the only password you'll ever have to remember from on now. It should be long and built up of mixed characters. Keep in mind that when someone gets your database file and guesses the password, he could access all passwords you stored in the database.”

If you want to be truly mobile, you can store your KeePass and the database in a pen drive so that you can use in any computer or laptop.

Once the main password is created, you can select the password group on the left of the screen and key in your passwords. You have the option of creating new or deleting the password groups. You can also create sub-groups.

Once you create entries, you have multiple options. If you right-click onto the entry you will find several options. “You can for example copy the username of the entry to the Windows clipboard. When you've copied it, you can post it into any other program of your choice. The same works for copying passwords. Alternatively, you can drag-and-drop fields into other windows.

KeePass can open the URL you specified. To do this, just click 'URL(s) - Open URL(s)' in the context menu. KeePass will start the default browser and open the specified URL.”

LastPass is a similar password manager, but with the additional option of browser plugins. LastPass is also web-based, which enables you to log in to sites from any internet-connected computer. The one disadvantage with LastPass is that you cannot have it in your pen drive like KeyPass.

KeePass is totally free, while Lastpass has a premium version with more features, including access from mobile phones.

Both KeePass and LastPass can also help you in creating passwords. This is an extremely helpful feature, as most of us are not good in creating complex passwords. Even if we do, remembering them is not an easy task. Both the programs can help you create and remember passwords.

LastPass has an additional feature where you can log in using a second layer of authentication through a grid. You have to keep a printed copy of the grid with you at all times as you will be asked to carry out the second level authentication whenever you log in to LastPass.

LastPass also provides the option of using third party authentication tools such as Google Authenticator or Duo Security.

If you find these tools too complicated and want a simpler mechanism, you can head to www.passwordcard.org/en where you can generate a grid and take a print-out. You can select a set of characters as your password. All you have to remember is the set of characters you have selected. Whenever you have to log in, take out the printed grid and key in the selected set of characters. If you select different set of passwords for different sites, you must remember the character set for each site.

If you think even this is difficult, you can go back to writing down passwords in a notebook like my friend. And guard it with your life!

>dinakaran.rengachary@thehindu.co.in

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