#passpack

Passpack Password Manager Review

Passwords, passwords everywhere!

Yahoo, Google, bank accounts, credit cards, medical accounts, insurance, schools…..you name it, it just doesn’t end.

We’re in the electronic age and everyone has a presence on the internet. This is great because it puts the information at your fingertips but it also means that you will have a ton of passwords.

I know that some folks tend to use one password for…

[Review] Sinh hoạt CLB ngày 23.2.2014

14h ngày 23/2 tại phòng A2 Nhà văn hóa Thanh niên diễn ra buổi sinh hoạt định kỳ của CLB Internet.

Góp ý xây dựng website CLB

Ở buổi sinh hoạt hôm nay, các thành viên clb cùng ngồi lại thảo luận về việc cải tiến website CLB. Bao gồm cả nội dung và bố cục.

Sắp xếp vị trí từng loại, thêm và bớt các mục

Đặt ra các quy tắc khi post bài viết.

Đưa ra các phương án A,B,C,.. cho từng vấn đề cụ thể.

Before the Holidays, I received notices from both PayPal and Facebook that my accounts were targets of overseas login attempts, both from somewhere in the Persian Gulf.

Both were, thankfully, locked down until I could contact Customer Support to prove my identity as the account holder and have them unlocked. And it put a fire under my butt about long overdue tasks, such as setting up uncommon passwords, and regularly changing them. The problem with that is remembering all those different passwords for the various sites I access.

That led to my using Passpack as a centralized, secure password manager. The company was brought to my attention watching an episode of Hak5, a show in the Revision3 family of techy/nerdy shows. More on that later.

The best part of Passpack is that you don't have to remember the passwords. You don't even have to type the target site's URL. It can all be done from your Passpack account. Well worth the FREE!!! cost for 100 passworded target accounts, and still wicked cheap for upgraded accounts. There are so many more features than I'll bore you with here.

Beyond using Passpack, I've setup 2 factor authentication for my GMail, my PayPal, and Passpack. Beyond that, EVERY one of my logins is set to the maximum string length, with the most complexity allowed for that site. An interesting sidenote is that Facebook allows a longer, more complex password than any of my credit card accounts. One doesn't even allow numbers. Sheesh.

Because I like USB dongles, I'm using a Yubikey (as seen on Hak5) for my 2nd factor on PayPal and Passpack. In a nutshell, it's a one-key keyboard, that injects random, time-based one-time passwords (OTPs) to authenticate my identity.

Yes, I went a bit overboard when I got those initial notices, but it was only because I got complacent and lazy with my security, and I tend towards excess. I reused logins, and didn't change them regularly. Don't necessarily do like me, but at the least:

use multiple passwords,

the longer, the better,

make them random, with numbers, alternating case, and special characters, when allowed,

change them periodically.