Sunday, April 13, 2014

Password Changes

OK, so after the recent Heartbleed fiasco ( The Heartbleed Bug is a serious vulnerability in the popular OpenSSL
cryptographic software library)I decided it was time to get more serious about passwords. I have strengthened My passwords over the Years as more vulnerabilities have appeared . I remember back in the day of "no password" or using a "default" or less than six character password. Those were the days! :)
There are several neat sites to help with checking and generating strong passwords. A neat ,free and easy to use site is www.passwordmeter.com
This site will check your password based on upper,lower case, numbers, punctuation,repitition,etc and give a percentage score. Another neat site is www.strongpasswordgenerator.com Hard passwords to remember are generated but it will give some hints to remember the password. You can also adjust the length and makeup of the password.
Several other sites to consider are "password managers" such as -Lastpass,Dashlane and Passwordbox which all have free versions and are rated high by several Tech sites. I have not done apassword manager yet to control My passwords but am considering it. One problem i have is the number of mobile devices and PC /Mac platforms. Some of My devices are muti-use for home and work so some conflicts could occur. With the continuing vulnerbilities cropping up all the time i will eventually need to try a password manager.For the time being I've changed,lengthened and secured all My passwords better but this only helps guard against hackers ,not vulnerable websites and stolen harddrives--
73---Tim