How do you store your passwords?

People store their passwords in all sorts of ways from plain text files to Outlook contacts.

Without password protection, these are not safe or secure.

What are the options?

Using existing office software that you probably already have you can increase security by using password protected Word or Excel documents.

There is no way to password protect Outlook on startup, so I would not recommend using it to store your passwords.

If you don’t have Microsoft office, don’t worry, there are better options for free.

For years I used a piece of software called SafeSex. Created Nullsoft by the authors of Winamp (a popular windows media player), it offered a free solution to safely and security save important information. It’s a bit like an encrypted, password protected notepad.

It worked well for me for many years but things have moved on. It was never released as a mainstream product and the code was never maintained. There has not been an update in many years and it lacks any improvement.

KeePass (recommended) focuses on one thing, storing your passwords safely and securely. It’s actively maintained and does the job very well.

Be careful how you store your passwords.

If you don’t store them securely, you can very quickly become an easy target. However, using one of the above methods should help prevent such issues.