Password Management Finally Possible

Apologies for nicking the post title (and pretty much the post content) from Joel Spolsky, but… YES! THIS IS WHAT WE HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR! *ahem*

Let me explain. These days, it seems that there are hundreds of websites which you need usernames and passwords for. Unless you’ve got an exceptionally good memory, you probably do one of the following: write the passwords down, or (worse) use the same password for each one. Not good. Especially if you use the same password for your bank that you use for any old website which might not have secure password storage (i.e., the passwords could be stored in clear text which would mean if the site got hacked, your password would be readable to the attacker).

What I’ve been waiting for is a solution which will let you store passwords in a way that can be used on multiple computers. I also wasn’t comfortable with storing my passwords on a website (i.e. a web application), I wanted to make sure I had proper security.

So, along comes DropBox. Download the software, and you’ve got a folder which automatically synchronizes itself with the DropBox website (over a secure connection). Then, download software such as Password Gorilla and create yourself a password database. Save it in the DropBox folder.

You can synchronize your DropBox folder between multiple computers, so you can have it running at work, home, whatever (it works with Windows, Mac and Linux). Also, you can access it via a web interface, so in case you can’t install the software you can still access your password info.

I’ve signed up already and it seems to work pretty well (it’s free) – and it’s definitely worth doing. It’s so important these days to keep your passwords secure, and pick good passwords! I’m going to start changing my passwords to try and make them secure…