The more we do things online, like your banking, emails, calendars, photos and all the rest of it, the more we need good strong passwords that we can actually remember.
And don’t forget that once you come up with a good one, you’re going to have to change it in a few weeks anyway (a stale password is as bad as a weak password).Unfortunately, there’s no magical great way to remember your strong passwords, so I use a different system – just don’t remember them at all!
I’m a person, and I’m not very good at remembering random collections of characters. But a computer – that’s exactly what they’re good at! So why not get a computer to remember all of your passwords for you?
Let your computer do the Hard Work
The one in particular that I use is called Lastpass (so-called because it’s the LAST PASSword you’ll ever need), which I prefer over the others for several reasons (we’ll get to that later).Before we start let me just clarify one thing – You will still have to use a password to access your password manager! Passwords aren’t going anywhere, we’re just going to go from you having a hojillion different passwords, to you having just one.
How It Works
The way it works is like this – you install a little application (don’t worry – it’s easy to do) on your computer, then you fire up your Web Browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari etc…) and you’ll see that the Lastpass logo appears in it now. Just click on that, enter your email address and password, and you’re off!Lastpass will now remember every password you use and automatically fill them in for you when you visit sites that need them.
Getting Started
So visit Lastpass.com and press the Download Lastpass button (outlined in blue below:
And then click on the Download button – don’t worry if your screen looks a little different here. The site will automatically choose the right thing for you, so hitting the Download button here will always do the correct thing for your computer.
Once it’s finished downloading, run it and pretty much just click Next on all the options that’ll come up. Answer sensibly when it asks what language you want, but that’s about as difficult as the questions will get.
Once it’s done installing, it’ll ask if you have an account already.Choose the I do not have a Lastpass account, create one for me option.
Enter your email address and your new Lastpass password, along with something to remind you of what the password is. Then tick all 3 boxes, and hit Next.
It’ll ask you enter your password again – read the warning on screen, it’s serious – do so, and then hit Save.
Click Next through the next few screens – it’s going to sort through any saved passwords you already have on the computer and move them into your new Lastpass account. Once it’s done, it’ll kick you back into your web browser.
You should see a new button up in your toolbar somewhere that looks like this:Click on it, and enter you details (email address and Lastpass password).
Leave the Remember Email box ticked, but untick the other two, and then press Login.
And now you’re done!
You should see the usual text boxes for you to enter your details, but they’ll be outlined in RED and will already be filled in.
Go ahead and sign into any of your usual sites and mess around with them – change your password on one to see what happens, or try logging into a new site that Lastpass doesn’t know about yet.
