Keep Track of Your Passwords Easily

Transcription

1 Keep Track of Your Passwords Easily K 100 / 1 The Useful Free Program that Means You ll Never Forget a Password Again These days, everything you do seems to involve a username, a password or a reference number. Remembering all these details is impossible for most of us, but the obvious solution writing them down somewhere isn t very safe unless you can be sure no-one else could read them. This is where a terrific program named KeePass Password Safe steps in. With this program, you can store all your passwords and replace them with just one: the master password that keeps them secure and ensures no-one but you can use them. Read on to learn more about this neat solution to the password problem. By Alan Harvey How KeePass Password Safe Protects Your Passwords... First Steps: Creating Your Password File... Using KeePass to Retrieve Your Stored Passwords... This article shows you how to:... Install KeePass from your Update 1/08 CD... Store and organise passwords securely... Use the stored details when you log in to websites Windows Vista/XP/2000/Me/98 K 100 / 2 K 100 / 4 K 100 / 13 You can install KeePass Password Safe from the Update 1/08 CD-ROM in the Update Software section 21

2 K 100 / 2 Keep Track of Your Passwords Easily Internet access leaves you with a lot of passwords to remember! KeePass stores them all for you in a single file The passwords file is kept private by one master password 22 How KeePass Password Safe Protects Your Passwords If you use the Internet, you probably have no shortage of passwords to remember at the moment. There s the username and password for your Internet access itself; more names and passwords for your accounts; yet more if you use Internet banking or have accounts at online stores; and many websites require you to pick a name and password before they ll allow you to enter. KeePass Password Safe is based on a simple but effective idea: you use the program to enter all your passwords and save them into a single file on your hard disk. This file is encrypted, meaning that no other program would be able to make sense of its contents: only KeePass (as I ll refer to it from now onwards) knows how to decrypt it and show you your passwords when you need them. Of course, KeePass must be installed on your computer, so what s to stop someone else from using the program to see your passwords? Quite simply, this encrypted file is secured by a password you choose. Only someone who knows your password could open the file and read its contents. So, in effect, you re replacing your multitude of different passwords with just one: the password that protects your KeePass file. Just remember this one password and you can forget all the others! KeePass isn t limited to storing usernames and passwords. If you want to store your credit card details for easy reference, or your customer reference numbers for your gas or telephone accounts, you can do so. They ll all be stored in the same encrypted, password-protected file to keep them private.

3 Keep Track of Your Passwords Easily K 100 / 3 Rather than storing your passwords in a long jumbled list, you can organise them into different categories. For example, you might have an category for details of your accounts, an Online Banking category containing your Internet banking details, and a Shopping category for account details at online shops. This makes it easy to look up the information you need, as you can see in the screenshot below. You can arrange passwords in categories for better organisation KeePass is completely free, and it can be used with all versions of Windows from Windows 98 onwards (including Windows Vista). If you like the sound of it you can install it from your Update 1/08 CD-ROM. I ll show you in simple steps how to install it, choose your master password and store your information, as well as how to retrieve it when you need it. Install KeePass Password Safe in 5 Easy Steps If you d like to install KeePass, just follow these steps: 1. Insert your Update 1/08 CD in your computer s CD-ROM drive. 23

4 K 100 / 4 Keep Track of Your Passwords Easily 2. Click Update Software, then KeePass Password Safe, and then click the blue text that says Click here to install KeePass Password Safe. 3. A little window will appear asking if you d like the setup instructions to be displayed in English. Click OK. 4. The next few steps are straightforward: click Next at each step to move to the next. Apart from selecting an option to say you accept the license agreement, no changes are needed. You ll reach a page giving a summary of the installation: click the Install button. Remove the tick beside this option 5. Finally, you ll reach the page pictured in the next screenshot. This invites you to visit the KeePass website, and there s no need to do that, so remove the tick beside Visit Plugins Website and click Finish. Click Finish How to start KeePass First Steps with KeePass: Creating Your Password File Now we re ready to make a start. Whenever you want to use KeePass either to store passwords, as you will in a moment, or to 24

5 Keep Track of Your Passwords Easily K 100 / 5 retrieve them open the Start menu and go to All Programs (or Programs in Windows 2000/Me/98) > KeePass Password Safe and click on KeePass. Before you can start storing any passwords, you need to create your password file and choose a master password to protect it. Let s run through the steps to do that: 1. Start KeePass from the Start menu as described above. 2. Open the File menu and choose New to create a new password file. Choose New from the File menu 3. Now you ll see the dialog pictured in the next screenshot. This is the important step in which you choose the master password that protects your password file. Have a think about what to use as a password: it must be something you ll be able to remember, but also something no-one else will be able to guess. It can be as long as you like, so a short sentence or several unrelated words would be a good choice. Whatever you choose, make sure you don t forget it! There really is no way to retrieve the passwords you store in KeePass if you forget your master password! Choose a master password (and don t forget it!) When you start typing, all you ll see in the box is one little blob for each character. If you d prefer to see the characters themselves, to make sure 25

6 K 100 / 6 Keep Track of Your Passwords Easily you re typing what you think you re typing, click the button containing the three blobs at the right. (Make sure no-one s looking over your shoulder though!) 4. After typing a password you re happy with, click OK. Type your chosen master password here You can click this to see characters instead of blobs Click OK Save your new password file 5. Now you ll see a similar dialog again. This is to confirm that you typed the password you d planned to type. Type exactly the same password into this dialog and click OK. 6. Now you ll be returned to the main KeePass window where you ll see several categories on the left: Windows, Network and Internet, among others. This confirms that your password file has been created, and before we go any further we ll save it to your hard disk. Choose File > Save As and you ll see a familiar Save As dialog. The dialog suggests saving the file into your Documents (or My Documents ) folder, giving it the name Database. This is fine, but you can choose a different folder and/or name if you prefer. Finally, click the Save button to save the file. 26

7 Keep Track of Your Passwords Easily K 100 / 7 Adding New Passwords to KeePass Now you re ready to start storing your passwords. I mentioned that you can organise your passwords into categories, and KeePass has created a few categories for you already, but it s up to you whether you use these or not. For the time being, we ll leave those categories there, but later on I ll explain how to delete any you don t need, give them different names, or create your own categories. First, let s add a password to be stored. As you probably have an account, we ll use that as an example: follow these steps to add the user name and password for your account to KeePass: 1. KeePass helpfully provides a category named which (despite the strange capitalisation!) is the obvious place to store details of accounts. Click the category to select it. 2. In the large section on the right, right-click and choose Add Entry from the context menu. (Alternatively you can save yourself those two clicks and simply press Ctrl+Y.) Select the category Right-click in this section of the window Choose Add Entry 27

8 K 100 / 8 Keep Track of Your Passwords Easily 3. Now you ll see the large dialog pictured in the next screenshot. In the box labelled Title, type a name you ll recognise for this password. (In this example, I m storing details of a Hotmail account, so I ve named it Hotmail Account.) Typing a web address is optional Replace the password suggested by KeePass 4. In the User Name box, type the username for your account. 5. In the URL box, you can type the web address that goes with this password. As my account is a Hotmail account and I have to visit the Hotmail website to use it, I ve typed the address of that website. If your account is provided by your ISP, you might like to type your ISP s web address, or simply leave this box blank. 6. Next we ll enter the password itself. In the Password box you ll see a row of blobs indicating that KeePass has generated a password for you already. This isn t particularly useful, because you need to store your real account password, so the first thing to do is to delete KeePass s suggested password. Click once in the Password box and then press Shift+Home to clear it. You can then type in your correct password. (If you prefer to see the actual characters you re typing rather than blobs, to make sure you don t make any mistakes, click the button to the right showing the three little blobs.) 7. In the Repeat box below, delete the suggested password and again type your real password. 28

9 Keep Track of Your Passwords Easily K 100 / 9 Enter a name for this password Type your username Delete the suggested password from these boxes and type your real password 8. In the large Notes box lower down, you can type any notes you d like to store with this password. 9. Finally, click OK. This will take you back to the main KeePass window where you ll see that your first password has been added to the section on the right. (If you click one of the other categories, the section on the right will still be empty because you haven t yet added any passwords in those categories, but click the category again and your new item will appear in the list.) Your newly-stored password is added to the list 29

10 K 100 / 10 Keep Track of Your Passwords Easily 10.You can repeat the same steps to add more passwords. Just click the required category on the left, then right-click a blank white space on the right and choose Add Entry (or press Ctrl+Y) and fill in the details. Remember to save regularly! You can delete categories or change their names If you want to make changes to a password you ve stored, either right-click it and choose Edit/View Entry or click it once to select it and press Ctrl+E. You ll see a dialog just like the one you used to fill in the details earlier, and you can make any changes you need and then click OK. 11. As with any file you work on, your changes need to be saved. You certainly need to do this before you close the program (and it will remind you if you forget), but it s a good idea to save regularly perhaps straight after you add each new password. As always it s a quick job: just choose File > Save or press Ctrl+S. Although KeePass is designed for storing user names and passwords, you can store almost any information. For example, if you want to store your customer reference number for electricity, gas or phone, you can use the User Name box for it, or put more long-winded details in the Notes box. How To Add, Remove and Rename KeePass Categories Organising passwords into categories makes it quicker and easier to find what you want, but you may not be keen on the categories created for you by KeePass. For example, you may decide you don t need a category named Network, and you may prefer the category to be named . To delete a category (which KeePass calls a group ), right-click it and choose Delete 30

11 Keep Track of Your Passwords Easily K 100 / 11 Password Group. A message will appear asking if you re sure you want to delete the group. If you are sure, click Yes. Remember that deleting a category in this way will delete any passwords you ve stored in that category. Only do this if the category doesn t contain any passwords, or if you don t want to keep the passwords it does contain. To rename a category, right-click it and choose Modify Password Group. A small dialog will appear showing its current name; you can change this as you like and then click OK. You can create your own categories too, organising things in any way you like. To create a new category, start by right-clicking the General item at the top and choosing Add Password Subgroup. In the little dialog that appears, type a name for the group. You can also choose an icon for the new category: click the button beside Icon, select one of the icons available and click OK. Finally, click OK again and your new category will be added to the list on the left. You can also add your own categories Type a name for the category Click here to select an icon Click OK Extra Security Features that Keep Your Information Private The KeePass database file containing your KeePass won t open your file without your master password 31

12 K 100 / 12 Keep Track of Your Passwords Easily passwords is obviously very private indeed, and KeePass takes great care to keep it that way. Next time you start KeePass, it will automatically open your password file, but initially all you ll see is a dialog asking for your master password. It won t display any details at all until you ve entered the master password you chose. You must enter your password after you minimise the program Lock the window if you have to leave your computer In a similar way, if you minimise the KeePass window, it will immediately lock itself, hiding all the details you ve stored. If someone comes to your PC and restores its window they won t be able to access anything until they ve entered your master password (which, of course, they shouldn t be able to do!). A certain amount of security depends on you though: it s best not to leave KeePass open on your screen if you leave your computer unattended. Instead, it s best to either close the program or minimise it (so that it locks itself). Alternatively, you can lock it manually by clicking the yellow padlock button on its toolbar. When you return to your computer, click the same button again and enter your master password to unlock it. KeePass remembers which password database was opened last and that s the one it opens next time you use KeePass. If other members of your family have also created their own password databases in KeePass, the program may try to open one of theirs instead. If so, click Cancel in the dialog asking for your master password, then choose File > Open and select your own password database file. 32

13 Keep Track of Your Passwords Easily K 100 / 13 Using KeePass to Retrieve Your Stored Passwords Using KeePass to store your passwords is only the first part, of course. You ve stored them for a reason, and that s so that you can get at them whenever you need them. Here s how to use those stored items: 1. After starting KeePass and typing your master password, go to the category containing the password you need. 2. If you included a web address with the password (as I did for my Hotmail Account item), KeePass can take you straight to the site: either right-click the item and choose Open URL(s) or click the item once and press Ctrl+U. Your usual web browser will open and go to the website. 3. Switch back to the KeePass window (by clicking its button on the taskbar or by pressing Ctrl+Alt+K). 4. Now copy your username to the clipboard by right-clicking the item and choosing Copy User Name To Clipboard or by pressing Ctrl+B. 5. Switch back to your web browser window, click in the box where you d normally type your username and press Ctrl+V. Your username will appear in the box. 6. Now we do a similar thing to copy the password. Switch back to the KeePass window, then right-click the item and choose Copy Password To Clipboard or press Ctrl+C. 33

14 K 100 / 14 Keep Track of Your Passwords Easily Using the keyboard shortcuts is quickest Discover more features in the KeePass help file 7. Switch back to your web browser, click in the box where you d type your password and press Ctrl+V to paste your password into that box. Finally, press Enter to log in to the site. It seems a little long-winded on paper, but it can be done very quickly, particularly if you use the keyboard options rather than right-clicking. In addition, many websites will remember your username and insert that for you automatically, so you ll only need to retrieve the password from KeePass. When you copy your username or password to the clipboard, it will only stay there for 10 seconds before KeePass empties the clipboard. (This is for security reasons.) To change this, choose Tools > Options, select the Memory tab and pick the Enhanced option. This keeps your username or password on the clipboard until you paste it somewhere and then removes it from the clipboard. Finally, if you d like to go further with KeePass, an option you might like to investigate is one named Auto-Type. You can find out more about this in the KeePass help file: choose Help > Help Contents (or press F1), open the Features category and click AutoType. It requires a little time to set up, but if you regularly visit websites that need a username and password it could be a useful time-saver: with one click or key-press it can insert the details straight into the web page as if you d typed them yourself. 34