How do I remember all these passwords?

If you are like me, you have a ton of passwords you have to remember. I have different login names and passwords for bank accounts, forums, blogs, email, and other stuff. How do you deal with it all? How can a person possibly remember them all, especially the ones that only get used once every month or two, or just a couple of times in a year?

One option, that I rejected years ago, is to use the same login and password everywhere. If a person were to choose a good, strong password, this would be secure, but only until any one of the several sites was compromised and the password data stolen. Is that likely? Maybe not, but this seems like an unnecessary and foolish risk to take.

So what to do? I use the same login on a few sites, but some sites have a login specific only to that site. Every site gets a different password. Some people like to use a basic, strong password as a framework, and add to it a suffix or prefix for each site. I just choose something completely different everywhere. This leaves me with the unenviable task of trying to remember all of them…actually, that task is not only unenviable, it is impossible.

Thankfully, I found a cool program called Revelation Password Manager. Revelation is a graphic-based password management program that uses AES encryption for data storage. It is easy to use, intuitive, and aims to be HIG compliant. There is a cool feature where at the click of a mouse Revelation will generate a strong password for you, and I also like the fact that one may copy the data file from one computer to another, or store it on a usb key, and it can be opened on any computer that has Revelation installed.

There are lots of great ways to do this. You could use gpg and encrypt a text file, leaving you able to open it anywhere you had access to gpg. There are other quality programs out there that do the same thing as well. I especially like TrueCrypt for encrypting data. However, every other solution I have used takes me longer and doesn’t have as nice of a feel to me as Revelation. If you are in the market for something like this, check it out and see if it will be a good fit for you as well.

The Revelation website has a series of screenshots for those interested and the program is available in the Ubuntu repositories, so installation is a piece of cake for Ubuntu users. Just install the “revelation” package using apt-get, aptitude, Synaptic, or whatever your favorite method is, and then look in the Applications->Accessories menu (if you are using Gnome as your desktop) for the Revelation Password Manager entry. Simple.

27 comments January 22nd, 2008