One Password To Rule Them All
February 1st, 2007 by Ian
I recently discovered the free app KeePass through Lifehacker. KeePass is used to help manage all your various login ids and passwords. If you are like me, you have many different ids and passwords for countless websites. This site requires your id is an email address, this site requires your id is numeric, another requires your id is alphanumeric, and on another your usual id is already taken so you create a new one. Then there are all those damn rules around passwords. KeePass makes it much simpler to manage all of this. KeePass allows you to enter your login id, password, notes, and URL for all your accounts. You can organize all your entries into folders to make them easier to find.
Of course, once you have entered all this information, it is important to make sure it is safe. KeePass allows you to create a master password to lock all this data.I’ve been using KeePass at work and home. I’ve seen suggestions on the web for syncing up the data between two installs, but I don’t think I need that. I want my work install to only handle the multitudes of ids and passwords I have for work. And similar for the home install. One great feature I love of KeePass is that it runs in the background and is there when you need it. You can configure it so that once you have minimized the window, it will automatically “lock”, meaning that when the program is brought back up it will require the master password. You can also have it lock after a specified amount of time in case you forget to lock it when you walk away from your desk.
If you are interested in KeePass, Lifehacker has a great tutorial on how to start using it.