In our last blog post I mentioned the importance of keeping your passwords safe from being hijacked by hackers. What I may have not have done is to put enough emphasis on the fact that it is just as important to have a wide variety in your passwords.
PC World Magazine recently printed in their April 2010 issue information stating that 73% of users in their study employed the same password for their online banking sites to access at least one other website. 65% also used the same user name in addition to the password. Hopefully you can see the inherent risk in going about your online life this way. If someone gets one of your passwords and spends some time searching online could gain access to other websites including financial websites using the same passwords.
The very safest solution to prevent the above from happening is to let Keepass software choose your password for you. This is the default password that shows when creating a new entry in the software. It will be a safe 112 bit encrypted strong password. However the downside to this is that if you don't have access to your copy of Keepass you would never know the password for your accounts. You can load Keepass on a USB thumb drive as a solution for this, but it is still somewhat inconvenient.
At the very minimum PC World and Brew City PC recommends that users should create a minimum of 3 separate log-ins. One for your financial sites, a second for any site holding sensitive information, and a third for websites that hold nothing of important value like Facebook for example.
