Dear Mr. Internet:
It seems like every time I want to do something online it requires a password. Is there a good way to keep track of all the passwords I use when on the Internet?

Suzie Mulvey
Long & Foster Realtors

First of all, congratulations for even being concerned about password security. Most people don’t bother and often use the same password for everything, typically something easy to remember (and guess) like the name of their dog, date of birth, etc. Unfortunately, nefarious hackers know this which makes most people tempting targets. This is because once they figure out that one password, it becomes a “golden key” to just about everything that person does online including giving potential access to financially sensitive information especially if you do your banking or manage your stock portfolio online.

The problem with using “good” passwords (i.e. not easily guessed or broken) is they are hard to create, difficult to remember, and cumbersome to enter into the appropriate online fields when required for access to online services. Fortunately there is an easy way to address all these issues. It is called Password Agent which is a nifty software utility that you can download right from the Net by going to http://www.moonsoftware.com/pwagent.asp.

Password Agent allows you to easily create, maintain, and use an unlimited number of passwords (the free version lets you save up to 25 passwords, as of this writing US$19.95 buys you unlimited use). This means you can create a unique, hard to break, password for every service that requires one. It also stores the associated “user ID” (which can be any kind of word) as well, since most services insist that you create a user name or ID and password.

Password Agent lets you store quite a bit of information about each service including the Web address and any other notes you want to save. This can be found in the Properties section for each password entry.

In addition, Password Agent has a very convenient random password generator that allows you to create passwords of arbitrary length (I suggest a minimum of 8 - 10 characters) consisting of upper and lowercase letter, numbers and even special characters (i.e. $%^@# etc.). This is a real timesaver and good security feature since it’s as easy as clicking a button to create a new password and they are never words found in any kind of dictionary, making it very difficult for even the most determined hacker to break your passwords.

Also, it is important to make sure your Password Agent password file is safely backed up on a regular basis (it’s a small file with a .pwa extension), otherwise you will spend a lot of frustrating hours resetting all the passwords on the various services you use. In my case it would be a catastrophe to lose this file since I have Password Agent storing nearly 300 user ID / password pairs! Also, if you intend to use Password Agent on more than one computer, it is this .pwa file that needs to be updated from one machine to the other so all of your computers have the same list of stored passwords.

Password Agent requires you to use a “master” password to guard access to all the other passwords in the database (which is saved in a highly encrypted form on your hard drive). It is important that you use a difficult to guess yet easily remembered password (for you anyway) to act as this master password. Whatever you do, DON’T FORGET THE MASTER PASSWORD, otherwise you will never be able to retrieve or access the other passwords being stored. By definition, this master password becomes the only password you will ever have to remember for all your online services. (See the Tip Of The Month below for how to create a difficult to break master password that is easy only for you to remember.)

Lastly, Password Agent makes it a snap to automatically enter your ID and password information into any website. Once installed, Password Agent sits in your Task Tray / Manager on the right side of your Task Bar. After selecting the password information you want to enter you just click your cursor in the UserName field and hit the special key combination (typically ctrl-shift-A) to automatically enter both the user ID and password for the respective service. In addition to being fast, it is also error free since you don’t have to manually type the information into the fields.

I recommend setting the Password Agent options so that you don’t have to reenter the master password every time you need to use it. Just remember to “lock” Password Agent (i.e. make it inaccessible until the master password is re-entered) if you should leave your computer on in a non-secure area.

The Internet continues to be a wonderful, extraordinary adventure –one however from which we still need to exercise reasonable precautions to keep our use of it safe and worry free. Password Agent is one of those very simple yet powerful tools that help us do just that!

(NOTE: Mr. Internet, his company and staff receive no compensation whatsoever from any third party vendors or service providers. Investigate any products or services found on the Net thoroughly to your satisfaction before using them at your own risk.)