The Lava Bot

Not so long ago, when online, you might have had just one password to store for your email account. These days though it’s not exceptional to have dozens of passwords for countless web services you’ve signed up to. And you can guess what happens : A good many people are inclined to utilise the same password over and over. Some people may not consider their Bebo profile as being majorly important, but it is if you’re utilising the very same password for that as you are for your WorldPay account. For sure, it’s convenient to only have to remember one password, but what happens if a hacker gets hold of that one password? You guessed it, they in theory have access to all of your accounts that use that same password. And if you are tempted to think they don’t know what other online services you’ve joined, it isn’t essential. They can run web application programs which screen literally thousands of services against your username/password pair that they already have.

This is a problem we all have to consider, but it can be solved. The truth is, you don’t need to remember every username/password. Why? Your browser can store this information. Be it your Yahoo Login or Email password. Just ask your web browser to store each username/password, and then setup a master password just in case an intruder else gets physical access to your computer. If they do have such access, they will have to type in the master password in order to login to any of your services. Or to put it another way, you can join hundreds of web services, and merely have to actually remember one password : your master password for your web browser.

Regarding passwords themselves, make them random and long, for example ghH945tfe4 which is a mixture of lower and upper case characters and numbers. As it’s not required to remember them, be as obscure as you like. A word of warning : don’t use dictionary phrases as your password, as these are effortless to identify for 3rd parties.