PC utilities: Help! I'm at my wits end trying to manage my passwords

Here's One Answer

In reply to: Help! I'm at my wits end trying to manage my passwords by Lee Koo (ADMIN) 

I used the "Master Password" feature of Firefox to access this page so as to answer your question. I believe there is a similar facility in Internet Explorer.

The one in Firefox has a nice feature in that, the first time you use a particular new site after setting it up, it allows you to wait till the site accepts your id and password before you need to click the "Remember this Signon For Me" button on a popup that Firefox conveniently displays near the top of the page when you attempt to enter a protected website. So, if you happened to enter your id or password incorrectly, you will of course avoid saving that incorrect one to Firefox.

The second and all following times you access any particular password- protected web site, Firefox will, via a large popup, offer to supply the id and password for you, provided that you key into that Firefox popup your master password.

To protect your passwords, you need to do more than that. The least you should do is to set up one additional id to your computer. That one will be for everyone else. Your own should be password protected, and that one password is the only one you will need to remember, after you have visited all your protected sites one more time.

For a separate purpose (discussed in the last paragraph of this note) you really should consider a minimum of three login id's to your PC (assuming it's XP). The first one is the Administrator password, and most of the time you should not log in using it. The second one is for your normal use. You should not let ANYONE ELSE use either of them. Then add one or more other ids for the other users.

Thereafter, use your secondary id and, unless you lose control of that password, no one else can get access to your other passwords.

Very handy.

The need for an administrative and secondary id for yourself has little to do with passwords, but rather with protecting yourself from hackers and malware. The press has reported this week that 93% of all critical Windows attacks cannot succeed unless the user is running with full permissions (administrator). There are a few things you cannot do except as administrator, but unless you monkey with the internals of your PC rather a lot (downloading files, etc.) you will usually be able to run quite comfortably (and more safely) without adminstrative privileges. One final point - the first id ever established on any Windows PC has by default administrative privileges, even if it boots up to your icon-populated screen without ever asking for a login selection.