Online security is a pain. If you have more than one bank account, multiple email addresses and numerous subscriptions to online services like Amazon, eBay and the rest, keeping track of your passwords becomes a real chore. We’re told not to write them down, and we’re told not to have anything too obvious that can be found in a dictionary.
A really simple solution (used far too frequently) is to have just one strong password, a complicated but memorable password for your main email account and a quick password for all your other, less risky, online subscriptions. While this is an elegant solution it leaves you open a huge risk — if someone gets hold of your main password you’re leaving yourself wide open to a cyberattack, if someone has access to your email they can request any password they like.
With modern threats like identity theft it is not uncommon for people to get hold of Facebook and Twitter passwords allowing people to pose as you and if you’re email address is linked to your social media account you’re showing the hackers exactly where they should be focusing their efforts.
Security experts recommend we have unique, strong, passwords of at least 12 characters including lowercase, uppercase and numbers. Generating random complicated passwords isn’t too hard… but remembering them is.
I must admit for a long time I was just using two passwords, one strong, one weaker. For everything! When I started hearing about Twitter services stealing passwords and people having their social media accounts compromised I started to think a bit more seriously about security. I’ve been using 1Password for the last 12 months and although not cheap (£25) I’ve not regretted the purchase one bit.
Once installed 1Password asks you to create one really strong password. Then when you sign in to your sites 1Password automatically saves your passwords (as many browsers already do).
The difference to just letting your browser save your passwords is that 1Password stores all your passwords securely in the cloud — allowing you to use any machine.
Crucially, when signing up with a new service or updating current passwords 1Password can assit you in generating a new, really strong, password — I just asked it to generate one for me and it came up with v8mJC739d;NZP”7352n. While this is safe it is far from memorable but this is where 1Password comes into its own.
1Password integrates with Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari. Your passwords are stored securely online (you also store them in Dropbox) so even if you’re not at your regular machine you can get access to your passwords via a weblink and any browser — there is also an iPhone app so if you’re sitting in an internet cafe you can just pull up your passwords on the iPhone and your in.
Whenever you sign in to a web service, e.g. Twitter, 1Password saves your username and password. You can also save multiple logins for the same site so if you have more than one Twitter account, for example, you can really quickly choose which personality to log in with. Switching accounts is as easy as hitting a button on your tool bar and selecting another personality. You can also log-in to sites right from 1Password, just double click on the account you want and it’ll take you to the webpage, automatically log you in — job done.
Having just one password is a bad idea, but having 1Password generate and store strong passwords is brilliant — you’re not just keeping your email and bank details safe but all your online identity is protected no matter how much (or how little) you trust their service.
Mac users have known about 1Password for a while now, it’s been running for many years and is kept up-to-date by a very active team of developers, there is now a Windows version (in Beta) so you can expect 1Password to become even more popular over the next 12 months.
Highly Recommended, intelligent and good-looking: 9/10
