Regardless of your IQ remembering your personal collection of passwords is hard work. With experts telling us we need a different password for each site and that we then need to change them every 6 months, well – it all becomes too hard!!
There is absolutely no doubt that a strong and complex password is one of the best ways of protecting yourself online. A combination of at least 10 upper and lowercase letters, symbols and numbers could keep cyber crooks guessing for years. A quick check of your password at How Secure Is My Password? will tell you how long it would take a cybercrime to crack your combination. (I added a few extra symbols and numbers to mine and it will now take 3000 years!!)
When you count up your passwords for your email accounts, social media logins, favourite online shopping sites, news sites, movie sites, online grocery ordering and so on your head will be in a spin.
So, what can we do to help stay safe and remember the various combinations of passwords? Here are some options:
- Use a category of words such as flowers or cars but replace the vowels with symbols. This could work….
- Store them on the computer in an encrypted file or vault. Sounds like a lot of work!
- Use a Password Manager. A Password Manager will manage all your usernames and passwords for multiple accounts. McAfee Safekey Password Manager securely stores your usernames and passwords for your favourite sites and logs you in with just one click!! Phew!! The great news is it works for multiple PC browsers and Android or Iphone smartphone devices.
My boys are always keen to remind me that I am getting older and becoming more forgetful – very kind! But now I can prove them wrong. Within about 5 minutes (installation time) Mummy’s memory is transformed! In fact- it is now in extraordinary shape. Mummy can now remember 20 different username and password combinations and change them every 6 months – thanks to her little helper (McAfee SafeKey Password Manager)! What a genius!!