Any Password

Like everyone else these days, I have a ridiculous number of user names and passwords. I have passwords for a bunch of websites, email accounts, services, network accounts and software. It's really hard to keep track of all of them and next to impossible to remember.
One strategy would be to make all of your user names and passwords the same, but this would not be advisable. What if a website somewhere turned out not to be as reliable as you thought? What if you had typed in the same information as you use for online banking? It is a very good idea to use as many different user names and passwords as possible to keep all of your accounts 'firewalled' from each other.

So how do you keep track of everything? For the last two years, I have been using a software called AnyPassword. There are several versions. The most simple and basic one - which I use - is free.

The program consists of a simple directory structure of user names and passwords. For each log in, you can store your user name, password, a URL, as well as notes. All of this information is protected by a single password. Now you only have to remember one thing. To keep the information safe, the file is encrypted using IDEA/MD5 algorithms.

A word of common sense advice: keep a backup copy of the installation software and always backup the data file!