Tips for Tuesday: Set up Password Keeper and use strong passwords

Chances are that in the last year, some service you used was hacked and your password was exposed. This happened for several million LinkedIn users, and more recently to some Last.fm users. Before that we’ve seen sites such as Gawker hacked, with email addresses and passwords exposed. For those affected, changing all passwords becomes a necessity. For many reasons, you certainly want the strongest possible password. Some services, thankfully, require one. Yet those can be difficult to remember. That’s why Password Keeper is more valuable than ever. I first used a strong password generator when one service I used told me that a perfectly reasonable password by normal standards — capital and lowercase letters, with a number and even a symbol included — was not strong enough. This service required, with no exceptions, a strong password. So I googled “strong password generator” and came up with something completely random. But how am I going to remember that? I could keep it stored in my email, sure. But after hearing of so many Gmail accounts getting hacked, I thought perhaps that wasn’t the best way. I can and do keep passwords stored in a file on my hard drive, but sometimes I need that password on a non-home computer. Password Keeper provides the perfect solution. To set up Password Keeper on your BlackBerry, simply click on the icon (it should be under the Applications folder, if you have one). You’ll be prompted to enter your password twice. Of course, you should make this a strong password, too, including letters, numbers, and symbols. Just make sure you can remember it, or else you’ll never be able to recover those other passwords. When you’re ready to add your passwords, click Menu and then select New. On the New Password screen you’ll have to enter a Title (i.e., site or service title), your username, the password, and the website. You can also includes notes — e..g, must change password every six months. Save it up, and you now have a stored password. If you ever need it, you can just open up Password Keeper, enter in your password for that, and find whatever you need. In this day of hacks and exposures, it’s the easiest way to ensure that you have a strong, protected password.

About the Author

Joe Pawlikowski is the Senior Editor at MobileMoo.com and has been covering the mobile industry full time since 2007. When he's not writing about the tech scene, he can be found discussing his personal love - baseball (and more specifically the New York Yankees) as well as writing on his personal blog.