Think about it for a second, better yet you have a ton of passwords on the internet and if you are a social media guru or entangled in the throws of phenom’s like Facebook and Twitter you might want to take at least a minute.
Ok cool now that you realize just how many places your password just might be, it might be a good idea to change your passwords and there is no better time to do it than right now.
Yes this is exactly what you came here for today, some silly tips or maybe an ever more silly reminder that you should change your passwords frequently.
I was sitting at the table tonight having dinner when I remembered that one of the first things I decided when I woke up this morning was that I wanted to change all of my passwords today, of course much like every other day today was mayhem. No passwords changed.
Now the sad reality is that most of you probably are beyond the point where you really considered setting some time aside to get your passwords changed, which goes against everything this post is about. Do the right thing and set some time aside to change your passwords and better yet do yourself a favor and keep different passwords for each of the various sites you visit on the web.
Having different passwords for each thing that you do online is key to safe guarding your confidential and private information, however keeping track of all those passwords can be a complete nightmare… I am terrible at it.
A quick search on Bing will return something like 120 million search results for Password Manager, I was thinking about listing each one here individually with a fine detail for each one than decided linking to the results would be much sexier. Instead of being completely lazy and useless I can recommend two password managers that I have actually used and have personal experience with.
When I used a PC my password manager of choice was Robo Form, and by PC I mean something that is not mega cool and crash free like a Mac. Now that I use a Mac I use 1Password and love it, the program will generate passwords for you and save them making it easy to access, copy or view your passwords safely. Robo Form and 1Password offer free trial versions of the software, pretty sweet huh.
Please do yourself a favor and change your passwords on a monthly basis, starting TODAY! Now before you go running off to some other cool blog make sure you leave a comment and be honest, how often do you change your passwords? Hopefully often because this guy has your password!
P.s time baby! Ok as you MIGHT know it’s Hell Week here on Extreme John.com and I am spending the week bitching and complaining about things, I am also taking “Guest Rants” as well, from the good folks like YOU 
As I was wrapping up my night I jumped into my email real quick, I had a quick guest post from “AMC” and wanted to add it in to one of today’s posts… You know, to keep that HELL WEEK feel.
Ok, I’m digging the rants and would add my own consumer rant but the only place that pisses me of right now is Victoria Secret. Why, you ask. Well, because they don’t carry sexy bras for us more bustier women.
I get tired of having to visit the local T & A lingerie store. I mean it was one thing when the stripper pole was a dance partner but for goodness sakes, I’m a grown ass respectable woman who wants to shop at Victoria Secret. Ya Know? Ok, well, maybe you don’t know..lol.
Cole Stan (2)
KyAus @ Those.Tips (2)
SafariDave (2)
{ 26 comments… read them below or add one }
Bugger.. the frequency with which I change my password is, to say the least, infrequent!!
Maybe I should jump on that… hmmm.. Or I could just procrastinate and regret it later..
Hard Rocking South African@Music Judge´s last blog ..Featured Video
@Hard Rocking South African@Music Judge, so it looks like you should probably be in the middle of updating your passwords right about now
@Extreme John, You got your Reply Button working… YEAH! Definitey… passwords need to be changed regularly… or you need different ones for each site that are really complex.
I know damn well how important my passwords are. I just lost a blog because of it. The hacker deleted the entire wordpress installation from the server.. I hope this never happens to anyone…Now I am very much careful with which password I use..
Compute Live´s last blog ..Windows 7 RTM Theme for Windows XP
@Compute Live, holy crap that’s a nightmare!
1Password is a must-have for a Mac user if you’re just a bit serious about your passwords. It makes it easy to have different – and advanced – passwords for all your logins and it syncs perfectly with iPhone/iPod touch too.
I had my old MacBook stolen half a year ago and I couldn’t remember if I had any passwords on it in plain text format or if I had my e-mail set up (it was a backup laptop, so rarely used it) – in that case, the thief could get my passwords sent to my emails and I’d be screwed, so I had to change my passwords for my e-mails and while I was at it, I changed them all, facebook, twitter, forum logins etc.
It felt good!
Klaus @ TechPatio´s last blog ..3 Article Headline Techniques That Will Bring A Flood Of Traffic To Your Site
@Klaus @ TechPatio, you know what your exactly right as I started changing my passwords today it really felt good, Im not close to done but Im working on it.
That blows about your laptop, backup or not people are losers.
I try my best to change every week or 2, my site was hacked last time and I don’t want to relive that moment
George Serradinho´s last blog ..How to place Floating Twitter Badge on your site
@George Serradinho, you had your Wordpress blog hacked before?
I like to change it often and i try to keep more combinations so that i don’t have same for all the websites.
gautam hans´s last blog ..50+ Awesome Twitter Tips to become a Pro
@gautam hans, that’s the best move on your part, very smart. What do you use to keep your passwords in order between the different sites?
@Extreme John,
Myself it is the safest i don’t keep any record. Manual is the best according to me.
gautam hans´s last blog ..Battle of the #Retweets:Tweetmeme vs Twittley: Which one is better?
@gautam hans, I think that with the various business’s and such it might be a little much for me to hard record all passwords. And dangerous in the event I misplace it.
I use a program called KeyPass Password Safe to manage all my passwords. It keeps track of almost everything including webpages and works with a simple click and paste so there is no keying in of passwords which will confuse those malaware programs that can track your keystrokes.
Sire´s last blog ..WassupBlog’s Ultimate Blogging Contest
I used Roboform for about 6 months, but after installing Firefox 3.5 I began getting an incompatibility error. I use several passwords depending on the types of sites (with very unique passwords for ebay, paypal, and banking). What I mean is, my password for large social networks and communities like Myspace and Facebook are the same, but different than the ones for smaller communities.
I keep passwords stored on a flash drive instead of my computer, but maybe it IS time to change them. They have been the same for several years (which is decades in internet time).
Larry W. Harms´s last blog ..Have A Blast At This Birthday Bash
@Larry W. Harms, I found plenty of mine that were a few years old as well, thats when it gets really dangerous.
I don’t change my passwords as often as I should but I do to have a good mix of passwords. A password manager is definitely an option to consider because it does get hard to manage 30,40,50+ passwords.
Blaine Bullman´s last blog ..The Power of Using Su.pr As Your URL Shortener
@Blaine Bullman, especially if you can make a free piece of software do the work for you.
I try to change my passwords once a month. Keep it unique with different combinations.
Jacob Yap´s last blog ..Envato Birthday Bundle – $300 Of Files For Just $20
I’ve changed all of my blog login passwords to 18 digit letters and symbols plus my username is just the same. I did the same thing to my cpanel and database passwords. I did this when ExtremeEzine was hacked and a bunch of spam links were added. As far as keeping track I’ll have to try that Robo Form out since I still have PCs.
Brian D. Hawkins´s last blog ..Extreme Ezine – Social Edition | Aug09
@Brian D. Hawkins, wow 18 digits is being about as maximum safe as you can be, very good thinking Brian.
I congratulate you John for bringing this issue to the people in such details. A very basic step to do after installing WP for 1st time is changing your username + password to a strong one, at least 12 digits. Of course, user should not use the same password on different accounts and chaning frequently!
Hicham´s last blog ..Egypt @ Digital Age
@Hicham, don’t thank me it was more of a self help, I thought if I motivated some of you to do it I might motivate myself as well. Haha.
Then I should be lucky to have a different password for each login… and a special password for less secure sites. I mean one which I want the password harvester to get and keep trying lol.
Kurt Avish´s last blog ..5 Free Romantic Couples Games
The problem is every time you change a password, you forget it, the bigger problem is when you have a different password for each site, and the problem with password managers is that it doesn’t help me when I’m logging in from a different machine, or my blackberry on the move. I just can’t find a good solution, so I haven’t changed mine for ages.
But I do make a point of having a separate password for anything financial – paypal, online banking etc.
Ha, I have changed passwords twice… each time it was after my computer was stolen.
I also use roboform with a master password that would be very hard for even a password cracker to break, at least according to all the guidance I have read for picking a password.
I, too use a simple password on sites that I would not care if someone used my identity, but a progressively harder password for more important sites, like ebay, paypal, etc.
Keith@Norman Rockwell Art´s last blog ..Oct 26, Norman Rockwell Museum: Making Vacations Memorable
{ 1 trackback }