~ Tips for making your life easier and less expensive ~

Saturday, February 24, 2007

Freeware Feature: PINs

PINs

Purpose: Store passwords in a secure database
Web site: http://www.mirekw.com/winfreeware/pins.html
Skill level required: Beginner

Deep down, you know that you shouldn't use the same password for so many of your accounts. You also know that you should use more complex passwords, rather than just incrementing a digit at the end of your pet's name every time your password expires. The problem is, how are you going to remember all those passwords?

The answer is PINs. Actually, the answer is: an encrypted password database. PINs just happens to be a fantastic and free one. With solid encryption and superb portability (no installation is required), PINs is my password database of choice for home and work.

A bonus is that PINs can generate passwords for you. So it can generate a password like P!+tZ-(9M, and you don't have to worry about remembering it. Or better yet, we can devise a password that's much more difficult to crack and is easier to remember. But you'll have to wait for another post to hear about that trick.

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