Tech Hygiene - Passwords Made Easy

Passwords, not surprisingly, are one of the biggest forms of weakness for people’s tech hygiene. When I say ‘passwords’, you are probably thinking “silly passwords, I can’t remember them, I have a book that has them but five are scribbled out and I have no idea which is correct for that one site”. Passwords being a big frustration for people is not surprising to me. I have an easier and more effective way to manage them and it’s available on your device and almost everyone I have helped in the past has never used the options available to them and are completely annoyed when I ask what’s your password when I do that phone or computer set up.

On average, a very basic user has about 30 passwords and I am talking about someone who doesn’t really want to use technology much. The younger generation has about 200-300 passwords, me personally 466 and counting. I have zero chance of remembering that many passwords and honestly, you don’t have a chance of remembering 30 passwords.

You might be thinking “uh-ah, I do remember that many, checkmate Enlighten tech”. Sure, you might, but what is your password? Is it something that relates to you in any way so you can remember? This scenario is very common in tech and most people can relate to this. One day you go to sign into a website you haven’t in a while and you see “Enter username and password.” Uh-oh. “It’s my grandson’s name and his birth year… or maybe with a # sign? Or a !?” Nope, wrong. You grab your password book—there it is: his name, birth year, two # signs, and a ?. Still wrong. You click “forgot password.” A “I’m not a robot” box pops up. Five tries later, you’re like, “Am I a robot?!” Finally, you get a reset link. You type the old password—oops, it says “No repeats!” You give up.

Repeating, names, streets, and things relating to you or even something connected to your past are all risky passwords and can be leaked or obtained by people with ill intentions. We will explore some of these in the social engineering blog coming up soon. Oh man, you’re probably annoyed at this point because how else are you going to remember these passwords, and how the heck are we going to stop all these frustrating experiences with passwords?

Password managers are your friend, and what if I said you just need to remember one really strong password to get into your passwords? Remembering one password instead of 30 is so much easier, right?  Password managers are great as they’ll do the rest of the heavy lifting; they will autofill the passwords for you, and most of them now can do those annoying 6-digit codes without having to text it and have you go digging for it. It will also make very strong passwords for you so you don’t need to have anything related to you and something that can be obtained easily.

A question I hear all the time is this: but what if I can’t remember all these passwords with a string of random characters and numbers? My answer is you don’t need to, since the password managers have your back and they are always easily findable inside the manager if you need them on another device.

Now, this all sounds like a lot of work and effort to just manage your passwords, whether it’s moving your passwords into the password managers from your book or resetting passwords to enter into the password manager or setting up the codes for your 2-factor authentication. I won’t lie to you and say it’s easy because it’s not; it takes time and might be a little bit of homework to get it sorted, but the safety and control online it will give you is important for your new and tidy life in the tech world.

You’re probably thinking “I don’t know what password manager I have or what to do when I have the password manager.” I get it, so that’s where I came in. I can get you started on the process of changing things over and sometimes get it all changed over for you. Contact us today to get started and get your tech hygiene top-notch.