Originally Posted by GrumpyOldMan (Post 1956675)

Good advice except for the password. Encouraging an "Easily remembered" is a doorway to less secure passwords. The imp[ortant part is to be as long as possible, second, it should be random.

Security has spiraled down into an abyss of complications for the average user. We need better. Biometrics would help but aren't ubiquitous enough yet.

There are very good password managers available for all platforms. Everyone should be using one. Password managers are apps that remember the password for you, so you don't have to. And good PW managers will also give advice on potential issues like you are reusing a password at multiple places (another no-no).

Apple has a very good password manager called "Keychain" which meets all those requirements and more.

It would pay users to get and learn and try to always use a good password manager.

Originally Posted by OrangeBlossomBaby (Post 1957434)

Yeah I had a password manager set up, and then when windows did an automatic upgrade, it logged me out of EVERYTHING -

including the password manager.

And I didn't know the password to the password manager, because I had google auto-fill the password for me.

And then there are all those accounts that require you to change your password every 90 days.

And then there are the few accounts that are left over from the dinosaur days, that finally catch up with the 21st century and tell you that you have to make a new password that's at least 8 characters long, require a special character, a capital letter, and a numeric digit. So all those "orangebaby" passwords now have to be "0rangeB^by"

Originally Posted by CFrance (Post 1957323)

Can you recommend a good password manager for a dyed-in-the-wool Windows user?

Originally Posted by Tunesmith (Post 1957381)

I've been using RoboForm for my passwords. At first, I just used the free version, but it didn't automatically sync passwords between all my devices. So I bought the more advanced version and that has been working great for syncing up any new or changed passwords with all my other devices. Go to roboform dot com, price for 1 year is about $24. Well worth it to remember 20-character randomly-generated passwords for you!
I just checked how long it would take to break a 20-character password that RoboForm generated. I used the "Use a Passphrase" link that was posted on page 1. The results for this password (BZfaUHBr.SJYGikf8393) was:
Approximate Crack Time: 31,167,128,343,915,984 centuries. Good enough for me.

Originally Posted by CFrance (Post 1957978)

When you sign up for this, do you have to change all your existing passwords?

Originally Posted by oldtimes (Post 1957988)

No. It will make suggestions but it will not force you. It's very slick, I use it on my laptop, on my ipad and on my phone. You only need to remember the one password that logs you on to the app and it takes care of the rest.

Originally Posted by OrangeBlossomBaby (Post 1958032)

How does it handle passwords that are required to change every 90 days, and you're not allowed to use the same password you used "x" times prior (each company seems to have different rules)?

Originally Posted by oldtimes (Post 1957988)

No. It will make suggestions but it will not force you. It's very slick, I use it on my laptop, on my ipad and on my phone. You only need to remember the one password that logs you on to the app and it takes care of the rest.

Originally Posted by CFrance (Post 1958126)

One more question, if you don't mind. What happens if you pass away and your heirs are handling your estate? I would have left the main password & user name, but would they have to have the RoboForm program in order to access my accounts, etc.?


When we had our trust revised, we were told to put a list of user names and passwords with the trust in the safe deposit box. Getting that list together has been daunting.

Originally Posted by oldtimes (Post 1958148)

Actually I use Lastpass which I am sure is very similar to Roboform in the way it works. It is free for one device and I paid $27 to use on all my devices. It is web based so they could log in from anywhere as long as they had the main password with the premium plan and could easily log in on your main device if you had the free version.