Passwords are a lot of trouble. Strong passwords are difficult to create and remember. Managing passwords for a hundred different websites for personal and work purposes is impossible. In the best case scenario you should not share the same password between more than one website or service.
Strong passwords look like this: Mn7b0S@*XBus
ServiceFirst Blog
Brian Krebs published recently that bank logins were blocked for customers of Quickbooks and Mint. Systems at Quickbooks were being used to find users who were sharing passwords across different websites. Thieves were also using information from Quickbooks to target users with large bank balances. This hits close to home because I am an Intuit customer for most of their products.
Soon after reading about the security breach I changed all of my banking passwords. I could do this easily because I subscribe to the LastPass service. LastPass is a password manager. It’s purpose is to store all of your passwords and help you manage them. It is able to generate long random passwords that are impossible to guess (and remember!) but using LastPass means you no longer have to remember your passwords.
All of the major browsers have their own password manager features that work very similar to each other. Regardless of the product you choose, using a password manager and relying on it daily will remove a lot of stress in your daily computing. Contact me if you want to learn more using a password manager and get a personal recommendation based on your needs.