What's the password....

We have enough passwords in our personal lives, ATM/Debit cards, home alarm systems, email accounts, job boards, social networking site log ins, online shopping sites, and online banking - UGH!  The need for passwords are endless.  My brain is currently holding so many passwords, that I don't have room for other important numbers like my checking and savings account numbers and my license and license plate numbers!  Who knew.

Just when you thought you reached your peak of creative yet easy to remember but hard to crack, you arrive at work to have to create even more alpha numeric and symbol passwords to enter your work station, get into a Human Resources Information Systems, payroll systems, POS system, job boards as an employer, administrator and vendor sites, maybe even the building!

Do we write these down, identity theft experts say no.  They also say do not make all of your passwords the exact same or even similar - JEEZ!!  I have all my passwords for work saved in my MicroSoft outlook notes section, but what happens when the computer crashes?  Another idea is putting them all in an excel spreadsheet or word document, but then I read that unless the document or database is encrypted its still unsafe!  So - what are we password protecting our password documents, creating yet another password?  Or just print the documents and store in a safe place.

As I googled (one of my favorite things to do) "where to store passwords" I ironically found a free online password manager website that stores your password in an encrypted database.  Let me say that I didn't look into this site in any detail, but it got me thinking - is it really safer to enter your passwords into an online database - really?  I won't be doing that any time soon.

Good luck in your password generation and storage!