The Source Computing Blog

With the proliferation of web services — there’s a new one out each day, it seems — it feels like we’re always creating new accounts, each with a different username and password.

The easy options — using the same password each time or writing them down on paper or in a spreadsheet — aren’t exactly the most secure. In fact, security experts strongly warn against these options as they leave you vulnerable to online theft.

So what’s a web surfer to do? If you’ve got more than a dozen services, you’re not going to remember all of them. It’s time to look into a password manager — and if you’re a cheapskate like me, you want a free one.

Let’s agree, from here on in, to stop using our dog’s name and birth date for our single password. Here are 10 free options for doing that:

* Firefox or IE: Both popular browsers offer fairly secure ways of storing your username or passwords for different sites, once you enter them the first time. This is very handy, and can save a ton of time. Unfortunately, under certain conditions, the password could be lost, requiring you to enter the password again. And if you’ve been relying on the browser to remember the password, you’re out of luck. Also, this solution is only for online passwords, not for network or desktop passwords.
* KeePass: One of the most popular password managers out there, KeePass is great because it’s open-source, free and cross-platform — available for Windows, Linux, OS X, and even mobile devices. It keeps all your passwords, online and off, in a secure database, so you only have to remember one master password. Be sure that master password is safe!
* Clipperz: Unlike most password managers, this solution is online — so you can access it anywhere. And it stores more than passwords — credit card numbers, account numbers, anything really. Storing passwords and other confidential information online can make someplace nervous, but Clipperz uses an encryption method that means not even Clipperz knows what it’s storing. This is a good solution if you need access to your passwords from multiple computers, rather than just one or two.

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