I use about
6 different passwords to access my let’s say 25 accounts over the internet, including
email, internet banking, linkedIn, oDesk, cloud9, openshift, bitbucket, twitter,
facebook, icq, project1709, Amazon … There
are just too many.
Some of
them I don’t want to type every day and I don’t see a problem in being signed
permanently, so I check the Keep me logged in option when I can.
Some of
them are so important and leave no way to forget the password, like work
account or internet banking login.
But some are
used so rarely, I sometimes don’t remember event login name, not speaking about
the password. How to solve this?
- OpenId
Great solution
(although one of those, where I don’t remember my password :-) ). The idea is
great, but still there exists too many sites, that don’t support this type of
logging. Maybe in a few years it could become a standard. There is always hope.
- Google / Facebook
This is
very similar to the OpenId project. I am not some internet privacy psycho, but
I think we already exposed our privacy to private internet companies too much. I
use Google logging information only for my Project1709 account and have never
used and I hope never will use Facebook for logging to some site (yes I’m not Facebook
fan). And I really don’t know all the quirks of this kind of authenticating, do
you?
- Let browser remember my passwords.
Why not, but I still have to remember username
and browsers store these information somewhere, not only locally but also
somewhere in the (probably these days) cloud. Is it secured, so nobody can
steal it?
- One password to rule'em all
Use the same
password (weak enough to remember) for all my accounts. Every admin likes this
just like passwords like ‘password’ or ‘123456’. No more comments needed,
except: it doesn’t solve usernames that you need to remember (every site has
custom rules for username, so you probably don’t have only one username).
- Wallet
Some
kind of application to securely store all my usernames and passwords. This
looks good, but it cost money (would you use some free tool for your passwords?)
and you will probably install it to your PC at home, or notebook, but it isn’t
always with you. And how do you secure it? Hey I lost my wallet password, I’m
completely lost.
There could
be some more ways how to deal this dilemma, but there is always the risk, that
you forget your password, or someone steal it from you because you set it too
weak, just to remember it.
My ultimate solution
It is really
not smart, maybe stupid you could say. I won’t argue, I didn’t say it is smart,
but it works for me.
Remember only
the really important passwords and those you need to use daily. Other set as
strong as you can, just to be sure nobody will ever steal it from you, register
your real email and in the next minute forget the password. And when the time
come and you want to login, don’t try to remember your impossibly complex and
strong password, just hit the forgot password link (button).
Every trustworthy
site let you reset or send your password in a minute and these days they value
users so much, that you don’t even need to remember your username. All you need
to know is your registered email.
As I said
earlier: it is not the smartest thing under the sun, but it works for me
several years.