Guest Post: Daisy, Daisy... give me your passwords do

Guest post by our very own (and soon-to-be-elsewhere -- *sniffle* ) Stef Morrill

When I was a kid, every night I slept with a ragdoll named Daisy and four stuffed mice named Tony (well, technically, they were named Tony, Antoinette, Tony Jr., and Tony Jr. Jr.).  Now that I think about it, that would make a pretty good password:  Daisy4Tonys -- it has uppercase letters, it's pretty long, and it has a number. Not too shabby.

Since it's such a great password, I think I'll use it for all of my online accounts!  It's so easy for me to remember (how can I forget Daisy? Look at that face!).

And this is where I get myself into trouble.  Even the best password shouldn't be used for multiple online accounts. Here's a great real-world example of why not:

Not too long ago, Gawker Media (a service that runs a bunch of blogs) got hacked and all of their user data, including passwords, were compromised. Not a big deal if you only used the password on this one site...it's easy enough to change, and there was no financial data for the hackers to get.  But what if you used the same password on a multitude of sites?  You're going to be doing a lot of changing to make sure all your accounts are secure!

I know what you're thinking:  "I can't keep track of all those passwords!" (well, actually, you might be thinking, "Really?  4 Tonys? Tony Jr. Jr.? How uncreative!") 

I can't keep track of them all either, which is why I use Passpack, a password manager that keeps track of them for me, and even generates super secure passwords at my request. For more information on password managers, see the "So many passwords...so little time" post from early 2010.