NWA-PCUG Newsletter Article, March 2012
Password Tracking – Windows and Mobiles
By Merle Nicholson, Secretary,
Tampa PC Users Group, FL September 2011 issue,
Bits of Blue

http://www.tpcug.org
merle (at) merlenicholson.com (click to email author)

Tracking passwords has always been a problem for me. Years ago I started a password Document to track everything, and, while it worked, it left a great deal to be desired. The problem was much larger than just username and password. I needed to save the URL to log in to websites. I needed to track expiration dates for subscriptions. I needed key codes for software. I have ?ve different logins with Microsoft. Yes, I could reuse some of those, using the same login and password, but not always. For instance, sometimes your login is the same as your email address, but most times not. Making it more complicated, different sites have different login and password requirements.

And Verizon! I have SIX different logins with Verizon: Call Assistant, Verizon Central, Verizon FIOS, Verizon Mail Account, Verizon Mail and Verizon Wireless.

So I developed some “password rules” for myself. I decided that if I could remember more than just a couple of passwords, it was because 1) I had to reuse them (a bad thing) and 2) they were too simple. So something had to go. I decided I need really good passwords and I couldn't handle it in my head.

One of my sons suggested the KeePassX database he'd been using for a while, and I started using it sparingly, slowly embracing its features as I got used to it. The program is maintained professionally and is available free of charge. You can look at the program at http://www.keepassx.org/ to see if this will suit your own needs. Of particular interest is the variety of devices that it works on. You won't see any mobile versions at the website, but each of the mobile devices has a version available from its own app store. I use the Android version on my Motorola Droid X.

The program uses an encrypted database, and I guess ideally there should be a way to automatically update or synchronize between devices. I own several computers and my Droid, and I need the database on all of them. I could use Microsoft Live Mesh or Dropbox or something like that for synchronization, but I dislike the idea of my password database being in the “cloud.” So for now I use a ?ash drive to copy the database ?le to my computers, and I connect my Droid to my base computer via USB and drag and drop the ?le.

I've found that, in practice, I don't have to refresh the ?les very often. None but the one on my main computer is up to date at any one time, but it never seems to matter.

What is so useful about this program is that I can store any useful information along with the URL and the logon and the password. For instance, my Amazon/Kindle account logon has the names and Kindle email addresses of two Kindles, two Droids (smart phones) and two PCs. It's a logical place to keep all this stuff. Right now I count 82 database entries, and I'm very careful to keep it trimmed of anything not useful. It has a con?gurable password generator and the ability to look at the password when you want to instead of a line of *******.

I got an email to my Droid with a noti?cation of an event on the TPCUG forum before I would even think of ?ring up my main computer. I needed to log on using a regular account on the forum. The peculiarities of a smart phone with just an on-screen keyboard that needed a complex login and password should have been just too daunting. But on the Android version of KeePassX, when you select the group (TPCUG) and title (User Logon), the database puts two little buttons in the noti?cation strip at the top of the screen. So when you open the browser to the site, you just poke the login noti?er, then poke and hold on the login box and a paste menu appears that you poke and it's pasted in place. Then the same for the password and I was in and out in seconds.

What a deal, and it's free. There are versions for Linux, Mac OSX, Windows, iPhone, PocketPC, Blackberry and Android. And if you think you don't need one, your passwords are too simple and you're using the same one for everything. http://www.keepassx.org.

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