Passwords @ MindSay

they froze my account!!!  grrr  I hate when that happens.  when you have more than 3 failed attempts at logging into an account because you forgot your login or password.....  crapola.  

Am I the only one that always forgets their passwords?    I don't feel safe using the same password for everything, yet I don't have the memory bank to store the gazillion passwords I've created everywhere online.   write them down you say?  yeah, that would be easy enough.

I need a code to get into my apartment building.  log onto my email and mindsay, read a newspaper article online, check my bank account, pay my electric bill, to instant message, log onto my computer at work, then log onto the program we use at work (which we need to change every month)....., log into orbitz to check how much my last trip was supposed to cost,  check my insurance claims online, etc etc etc.  

for those that use Bank of America online banking........ it's like getting into fort knox!  exaggerating and I know, of course it's for my benefit.  but frustrating when you only have a second before the boss comes around the corner.  lol.   

hope everyone's having a good week.

To remove the Stored User Names and Passwords from your system, try this:
Click Start, Run and type Control keymgr.dll
Remove the entries from the list.
The other ways to access this dialog are:
Type Control Userpasswords2 in RUN box, click Advanced, Manage Passwords
-or-
From Control Panel, select your User Account, click Manage your network passwords

It Works

Most webmail do not have the ability to provide a secure connection while you are using it.  It's the same type of security that is used to lock you in and others out when making online purchases.  Gmail does have that ability but you have to use a specific url to trigger it.  If you use https://gmail.com/ then it will ask for a certificate (answer ok) and you will have a secure connection while in your gmail account.  Granted this does nothing for securing email after that's been sent as you have to use encryption but it does add a layer of security while checking your email.  The trick here is adding the s after the http, this basically is asking gmail to provide a secure connection.  I'm currently not aware of any other generic webmail service such as yahoo and hotmail that provides this feature.  I've had my hotmail hacked and used for spamming before so it's nice to have a secure connection to your webmail.

Something else you can do is use a hard password.  Most people use some sort of name that makes sense to them but any word that is a person's name or initials can be hacked.  Adding numbers at the front or end doesn't help at all.  Hackers use dictionaries that run through numbers, names and words (in every language both ancient/modern) that finally break your password.  So tina55 is a walk in the park to break which is known as a soft password.  To create what's called a hard password you must use seeming random mix of letters and numbers such as d0v1r8s2.  How would you remember such a password? Because this would be the acronyms of a phrase and some date or favorite numbers.  I created this by using the phrase Darth Vader Rules Suckers 01/82 (Jan, 1982).   So I took the first letter in each word and alternated that with the date Jan, 1982 or 0182 to come up with d0v1r8s2.  If the application allows you to add in a special character like !@#$%^&*() etc do so as this creates a tough password to break (gmail allows special characters).  For example *d0v1r8s2& would be a very strong password and probably take someone more time than it was worth to break.   Be safe online.

-Peace Out