Galapagos Islands, Ecuador.
If you are like me, you probably have a ton of passwords for various websites. One for your bank, one for your credit card, one for Amazon, one for accounting software…and the list just keeps getting longer and longer. Yes, I was one of those people that wrote down all my passwords and had a secret place I stored my password list. It worked okay, but I often had to get the list to remember my passwords. And not secure if someone broke into our offices.
But then I got some advice from a computer expert on password manager apps, and he recommended 1Password. I can’t tell you how much this has simplified my life. 1Password is a heavily encrypted/secure password manager that remembers all your passwords. You start by signing up, and creating one master password, the only one you have to remember. Once you enter this password, the program ‘unlocks’ and your websites/passwords are available at your finger tips. To get started you manually enter each website and the password for it, and 1Password will remember it. Then just double click on the icon/website in 1Password and the site opens; autofill enters your user name and password. Everything is heavily encrypted from the moment you open the program. 1Password will also send you a secret key that you hide in a very secure, hidden place. If you ever forget your password, you can enter your secret key to get back into the app.
Initially I wasn’t so sure about having all my passwords in one app. But then I thought about all the autofill passwords I had turned on my computer. If someone started using my computer, many of my important websites (think bank, credit cards) would autofill and anyone could access them. Of course first they would have to enter my computer access code. But even if they figure that out, now they have to access 1Password which isn’t going to be easy. In the end you might be just fine with passwords on a piece of paper. Or maybe you aren’t too worried about the data on your computer. But if you want to have one program remember all those passwords, take a look at 1Password and see what you think.