Keychain & Passwords

Are your passwords secure?

I listened to a really interesting book recently about hacking… one of the most interesting things this book talked about was how easy passwords are to crack. So here are my top password tips:

• DON’T WRITE DOWN YOUR PASSWORD
• DON’T SAVE YOUR PASSWORD IN A FILE ON YOUR COMPUTER
• DON’T USE WORDS FROM THE DICTIONARY/YOUR PETS NAME/KIDS BIRTHDATES/YOUR NAME/ETC
• DO USE A PASSWORD STORAGE APP
• DO USE A COMBINATION OF UPPER & LOWERCASE LETTERS/NUMBERS/CHARACTERS(!?@#$_-)
• DO CHANGE IT REGULARLY

Here is a quick guide to using Keychain to SAFELY save passwords on your Mac:

If you are a Mac user and you have ever selected Save Password when prompted, all those passwords can be found and accessed in your Keychain.

Keychain is secure and a great way to store your saved passwords so you don’t have to remember them all!

• To Find a saved password you need to Open Keychain
• Click on Finder (Bottom lefthand corner of the screen)
• Select Applications – Utilities – Keychain Access

• Search by entering a keyword in the Search box in the top righthand corner
• Press Return to search

• Double click the item in the list you need the password for
• Tick the Show Password box
• Enter your login password to access
• Press OK

• The password will be displayed until you close the window