If you spend any time on the internet, your life is filled with passwords. You need a password for your email account, one for your website, for your bank, for your blog, for your applications, and just about everything else. With so many passwords to keep track of, it’s easy to fall into the trap of having a couple of passwords that handle everything. The problem with this is that if someone gets a hold of one of these passwords, then they can access anything else that you use that password for. The solution, have a different password for every account you might have. This might seem unrealistic but with KeePass Password Safe, it’s as easy as browsing files.

KeePass is a free, open source, password safe that can store your passwords in passphrase protected file. This means you can eaisly have a different password for every login you have without having to remember every single one.

KeePass also handles password generation. It’s simple interface allows you to chose the length and the types of characters in the password and then allows you to generate the password using random mouse movements and keyboard input. This makes for completely random, thus stronger, passwords. The passwords that work best are the ones that have no personal ties to the user of that password, and having the passwords randomly generated helps that.

Another safe password tip is to change your passwords at random intervals. The length of time between password changes varies from author to author but I believe that a standard 3-6 month rule is effecient enough depending on the password. For example, I change my bank password every 3 months while I change my AIM password every 6 months. KeePass helps with this by allowing you to set a expiration date on certain password. It even gives the options of various intervals from 1 week to 1 year. You can even set some passwords to never expire, though I would not personally recommend this.

With KeePass, having safer passwords is easy and I encourage everyone to begin having safer passwords.