Secure Password Management with Password Safe

I have a lot of passwords. Hundreds. I need some place to store them. But that storage system has to be secure. Having a spreadsheet or text document of all your passwords stored on your computer–or a sheet tucked in your wallet–is an invitation to disaster. If you computer is hacked or your list is found by somebody, if it is NOT ENCRYPTED they have the keys to your personal (online) kingdom and they can reek all manner of havoc.

I have been using Password Safe, a free, open source password manager that stores all my passwords in an encrypted, password protected file. (Yeah–you have to remember that one password, but everybody can remember one password, can’t they?)

Password Safe was created by Bruce Schneier–the guy that, literally, wrote the book on cryptography. The Java version of Password Safe is cross-platform, so you can use it on Linux, Mac and PC. It allows you to store and manage all your passwords from one place. The data files are small and securely encrypted, so you can back them up to a USB drive, send them to your Gmail account or store them wherever and not worry that somebody will open the data file and steal all your passwords. (Assuming, of course, that you have created a good, secure password for the data file itself.)

As more and more of our lives is transacted online, keeping our identity, our bank accounts and our information private and secure becomes more and more important.

Use good passwords and keep them stored in a secure manner. Please.

Are You Tweeting About Me?

Do you have the feeling that people you are not following on Twitter are talking about you or even trying to @message you but the messages are not reaching you because you are not following them?

Do you even care?

Well, if you do care, here is a simple solution to seeing who’s tweeting about you. Use the Twitter Track feature and track your user name! On Twitter I am jfxberns so I would use the following command to track my user name:

track jfxberns

Now, any time somebody’s tweet has jfxberns in it, I see it on my Twitter client. Pretty handy!

If you want to see who’s tweeting about you–just track yourself.

track yourusername