Shooting the Breeze: Remember all those passwords?
Paul Chan discusses ways of remembering your password.
They say it's a really bad idea to write down your PIN number on a piece of paper in your wallet or purse when you carry a credit or debit card around with you. I hope that goes without saying for everyone but what about those usernames and passwords that you use on websites?
I'm usually very good at remembering passwords as long as I have to use them regularly but what about those collections of sites where you have usernames and passwords?
I was recently looking at a site called Flickr - it's a well known photo album site on the web which you can use to store your pictures in fully captioned albums and share them with friends and family or open them for the world to see.
There are plenty of options available within Flickr and I thoroughly recommend anyone who is into digital photography to set up an account and give it a whirl.
I moved on to another project while testing Flickr and, sure enough, 2-3 weeks later I found myself wondering what clever password I had decided to use when I first logged in when I came back to explore Fickr again.
Sure, you can tick the box marked 'Remember Me' so you log in every time but that only works on one computer (hopefully your own private one) and it doesn't help you if you were to buy a new computer and start using that instead.
So, what do you do when you have accumulated several usernames and passwords?
Well, password hints can be useful but it's possible to get too cryptic with those too but I am starting to write down all my passwords that I am likely to forget.
Obviously, you would have to look after this sheet very carefully and still be cunning when devising your passwords but you'd hope not to have to refer to it very often.
