Difficulty: Involved
What you need: KeePass for Windows
Why you need it:
“Remembering multiple passwords can be a challenge, which is why many people find that a good password manager is indispensable. KeePass is a good, free password-management option that works on Windows.” Nick Mediati – PCWorld
What to do:
Get the professional edition of KeePass at http://keepass.info/download.html (it’s free) and run the installer on your machine. Set it to run automatically when you start up your computer, and launch KeePass. You’ll be presented with a blank window like this:
I’ve highlighted the “New…” command on the toolbar. Click this to create your first password database. Save the database to a location of your choice, and the “Create Composite Master Key” window pops up:
This is a key step in the process of protecting your passwords. The idea is that this master password is used to encrypt all your other passwords and keep them safe within this database. The flip-side to that protection is that you cannot forget the master password, because if you do, you won’t be able to access any of the passwords you’ve saved. My recommendation: choose a long password (10 characters or more) and spend some time memorizing it, especially over the first few days you’re using KeePass. Don’t use this password for anything else. Within the program, you’ll generate a different password for every site you visit.
Click OK once you’ve entered the master password twice, then hit OK again on the next screen (you can explore the options, but the defaults should work fine). You’re presented with the default setup:
Let’s go over some parts of the KeePass interface you’ll interact with. Each item has a color in the screenshot above so you can match them up:
- Entry (red): A saved password. You’ll create an entry for each website and generate a password for it.
- Group (green): A collection of entries, usually by type (banking, news, sports, etc.)
- Add Entry (purple): Click this to add a new entry in the current group.
- Lock (blue): Manually lock your database so the next time KeePass is opened, you need the password to access passwords. You can set KeePass to lock automatically in it’s options menu.
You can see my database is named “test2″ for this example. The pre-populated groups are common types of passwords (windows, banking, etc.), but you can feel free to create your own by right clicking on the top group and clicking “Add Group”. For now, let’s create a new entry in the “Internet” group for Facebook. Click on the group on the left, then click the “Add Entry” button. You’ll see the new entry wizard:
I’ve filled in a name for the entry as well as an example email. You can use the username/password combination to log in to the website once you’ve saved it. You can see the default password size is long (20 characters). Although this is safest, some websites might not accept a password this long. To fix that, click the icon with two keys and select “Open Password Generator”. You can change the length of the new password in the box shown below:
Once your new random password is the length you want, click OK to add it to the database. Click “File” -> “Save” to save your changes. Now you’re last step is to use the new password online. Head over to the website you’ve created the password for, and find the place to change your password. With the website open, switch to the KeePass window and use the shortcut key for copy (Ctrl+C) to put the password on your clipboard. Now use the shortcut for paste (Ctrl+V) to copy it in to the browser for both password fields:
Now you have a safe, random password for Facebook, saved conveniently in KeePass. Remember, memorize that master password! It’s convenient (only one to remember) and it’s more secure (if one company online gets hacked, the damage is minimized to only that institution).
Although this post doesn’t cover it, there is also a Mac version of KeePass called KeePassX, which you can download here.
Title photo by practicalowl via Flickr.
