Free Password Management software

To keep computer files, internet connections and other resources just to ourselves, we use passwords. Some people use the same password for everything. This is a very bad practice. Because if someone comes to know about this password then they will get access to all your resources. There fore it is essential to have different passwords for different purposes. But this poses another problem. It becomes very difficult to remember all these passwords. Some write these passwords in their diary or write on a small paper and keep it on their table. This too is a bad practice. Because it is easy for other people to get hold of this information when you are not around.

If you could keep all your password in a database and then encrypt this database and protect it with a password then all your passwords will be safe. Then you just need to remember this one password, so even if you forget other passwords you can still use this password to open the database and check the password.

You can use a free password management software such as 'Password Safe'. You can download password safe from http://sourceforge.net and install it in your computer. Then you will never have to remember many passwords.

To create a master password

When you open Password safe for the first time it will ask you for the 'Safe combination' which is nothing but the master password for your password database. The safe combination password should be long and contain both numbers and alphabets so that it is difficult to guess. If you give a simple and easy to guess password then password safe will warn you. Now key in the same password again in the 'Verify' box and click on 'OK'.

To add passwords to Password Safe

Click on the 'Add Entry' button in Password Safe. In the new dialog box give 'group name' (optional) and the title name and then key in your username and password. In the 'Notes' section write anything you want to write about the account. Now click on 'OK' to add this information to password safe.

As mentioned in the above paragraph add all your passwords one by one. When you close password safe program it will ask you where you want to save this password database in your hard disk. This is only for the first time.

To retrieve the password

If you forgot the password for any file or program and you want to retrive the password from password safe then password safe will first ask you for the 'master password'. After you give the master password the database will open.

Then click on the 'title' for which you want to know the password. Now click on the 'Copy password to clipboard' button. Now the password will be copied to the clip board. You can use Ctrl + V to paste it anywhere you want.

When you exit the password safe program, it will automatically clear the password from the clipboard for security reasons.

You can also edit the password if you want.