04 October 2004

Bad Luck, Pen Drives & Passwords

My motherboard decided to die on me so I was left without my desktop PC. No biggie, I still had my laptop. Unfortunately, its hard drive had other plans. Oh well, I still have access to various computers both at Chefax and at FEUP. And one thing all those computers have in common: USB ports for me to plug my pen drive. I don't just carry data in it:
- Portable Firefox (with all the extensions I use) & Thunderbird
- Putty (Chefax Mirror)
- Real VNC
- UPX
- Winpcap & Python installer for windows (linux usually has python installed)
- etc

Due to a rather uninteresting chain of events my pen drive was missing a key file - my keys file. I have a different password for every account I have (gmail, hotmail, blogger, etc) and while they are all cool, I change most of them before I can remember them. I use Keep Pass to store and access them. It has big advantages in terms of security – it allows me to store them securely which in turn allows me to choose better passwords AND change them more often. It has a problem tough: without the password database file, you can forget about accessing all those accounts. Well, not exactly. Every one of those passwords can be changed or mailed to me - if I have the email account password. I use a special mail account to register for services on the internet. It was meant to protect me against (technicalities aside) spam but because I use it often, the password stuck to my brain. I didn't feel like changing all those passwords just now tough... And that doesn't explain why I haven't posted. The explanation for that is laziness combined with a rather busy month...