If I strung together all the time I spent organizing, resetting, writing, and searching for login, user, and password words and phrases, it would amount to a few months—at least. Do you realize what you could accomplish with that time? When the company was relatively small and we had one local server, a couple of mailboxes and a handful of computers, we used one password. It was a weird one that didn’t make any sense, but everyone could remember it and we used it for everything. Then word came down from the highest sources warning us of our bad practice. We also had a PC doctor tell us to change our login names and our user names. “Make them long, make them clever, make them hack-proof!” And so we did.
I can say, with absolutely no hesitation, that it has been a complete headache and a waste of time. Well, maybe not in the beginning… I mean the “cleverness” of it all. We were young and so were the hackers. Everyone has gotten wiser and smarter. Hackers are relentless, sophisticated, and increasingly knowledgeable. There isn’t much in the way of “cleverness” that a mediocre hacker can’t get around.
It’s best to go into your dashboards, your preferences, and your DNS set ups to “check” and choose filters, blockers, and tools (oh, so many great tools!) to make your websites, mailboxes, and servers more protected. Let the experts help you. Save your time and reduce the headaches of creating complicated lists of logins and passwords. I’m not saying reduce your list to your first pet’s name. You just don’t need to come up with a puzzle, word system, and diagram.
More importantly, than any system that you may come up with for keeping track of your logins, users, and passwords, is who has the ability to choose, change, and access them. Designate a trusted person to dub as the admin, always keeping yourself in the loop. Organize and guard anything you store for reference.