Your Internet password strategy can be improved. Tremendously. Bad Internet password strategy is a real time killer.

Whenever you do not expect it, a webpage will ask you for your password. And that means that you have to initiate the long and tedious “new password” procedure.

The following will help you to save time if you need to generate new online passwords frequently.

Use a Portable Digital Vault for Your Passwords

A digital vault is a highly-encrypted password file. The password file can be kept on a smartphone or on a USB stick, to make it portable. The digital vault is accessed by a password manager program and it can only be unlocked with one Master Password, which becomes the only password you need to remember.

A very good Digital Password Vault is KeePass

KeePass is freeware and OpenSource, downloadable for your computer here https://keepass.info

KeePass can be downloaded and run directly on your computer, for example from a USB key, without needing to formally install it anywhere. No administrator needed.

My favorite is to install KeePass as an app on my smartphone. KeyPass apps are available for iPhones and for Android phones.

OpenSource for my Sensitive Passwords?

OpenSource does not mean that everyone can see your data. Opensource is good because everyone can see that KeePass uses the encryption algorithms correctly. This makes sure that the passwords are kept safely.

Where to store the highly-encrypted password file?

You can keep the highly-encrypted password file together with the KeePass program on a small USB thumb drive in your wallet. Alternatively, you can keep the highly-encrypted password file on your smartphone, using the KeePass app to access it.

In addition to that, you can save a backup copy of the the highly-encrypted password file to your cloud storage service, such as OneDrive, DropBox, Google Drive, or similar.

From all the available options, an iPhone is the easiest way to keep the highly-encrypted password file together with the KeePass app. The iPhone’s automatic backup will keep it savely to iCloud. This is why I recommend an iPhone for smartphone beginners.

Don’t use an online password vault service

Online password vault services are prone to hacking attempts. Cloud-based databases are juicy targets for hackers from all over the wold to try out their skills. I don’t want this, I want my own encrypted passwords to sit at a hidden place. This provides an extra layer of security.

KeePass does this. A key difference between KeePass and all cloud-based password managers is that KeePass is a software that you run locally – not an online service – and your KeePass vault is something you store in a location of your choosing. It’s up to you where your password vault goes and who has access to it. Keeping the password vault off a cloud-based services actually makes it also highly portable.

A short video tutorial about KeePass

here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQuDrKSZkck

Actually, you don’t need a tutorial for using KeePass on your smartphone.

Call to Action

Save this email at a prominent place for later use.

You don’t need to install KeePass now. Do it next time after you generated a new online password, while you are waiting for the confirmation email. Then try out KeePass for storing the new password.

It is easy, Promised.

Martin “change password only when I want to” Schweiger