Accounts and Passwords

How many online accounts do you have ? So many username and passwords to remember. It became crazy for me after i enrolled to frequent flier programs (hotels and airlines). You get "points" for everything these days. As everything is online, you can check everything online. but it also increased the number of usernames and passwords to remember.

I would prefer a "SSO" - single sign on for "everything". You login to a host of services using a single username/password. We have it already partially. Only that it is for all services provided by a particular entity - google or yahoo. But it did reduce some passwords to maintain.

Some websites need you to register online. Here "bugmenot" helps me in removing the need to register to many websites. There is a firefox plugin which makes it even more easier to use it. It reduces the number of accounts i have to keep track of.

Even if you forget your password and in some cases your account name also , you can get the information emailed to you on most sites by giving the email id which you gave during registration. It is easy to retrieve information easy this way.

With many accounts, i thought it is becoming messy. I started to organize and i have most of the accounts back in control. Soon i will be using a password manager and use it to manage all the passwords.

Start using a password manager and manage all your accounts. Choose a open source application and use very good encryption on the password files. Dont store the password in plain text form. Have a small note which will remind you of the password you gave to that account. This adds more security that even if the encryption on the password file is broken, it would not make much sense to the user who is looking for passwords.