It’s staggering, really, how many passwords we each use on a daily basis. I’ve been thinking a lot about passwords these days, because we have a really cool product coming out, but hold that thought: how many times a day are you forced to remember, correctly enter and secure an account with a password?
I have a password on my phone, on my laptop, for my VPN (virtual private network) that allows me to securely work from home and of course my social network and micro-blog. I even have an app on my phone for my new electric car so I check the battery charge via our home network…and THAT has a password. Every one of my shopping sites, my work accounts like our benefits website, my bank, travel websites, etc. I probably manage more than 100 account names and passwords. Now about 20 of those I use daily while the remainder I might access only once in a while.
Whew! It’s mind boggling and I can’t remember how this all started. Of course with the move of our computing lives to being increasingly mobile and online, each new site, each new app has to have a secure password. (“Oh no, she’s talking about secure passwords!”) Cue my broken record: it can’t be a dictionary word; it can’t be something a friend could easily guess; it should be a complex combination of letters, numbers and characters; it should be 8 characters or more – a good password is all these things. Most importantly a good password is unique and isn’t re-used or recycled on more than one account.
Most people have heard all this advice before. In fact, a joke I heard from a European comedy festival went, “I needed a password with eight characters; I’m using ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” So why do we all ignore this advice? Because it’s just too hard!! I know, I completely agree. And it’s always seemed a better solution would come soon so in the meanwhile we all use terrible passwords (like “password”; “123456”; “letmein”), write them down on yellow sticky notes and commit other felonious password crimes.
There are better ways to get you to a solid password way of life: password managers are not new and have come a long way. But if you’re managing mobile devices in addition to your computer or you switch from work computers to home, or you’re on your tablet upstairs and your main computer is downstairs, you’ve probably said, “I need something more portable! I need to be able to retrieve my passwords wherever I am!” And even if you never said that, you’re still going to be glad the Norton team did.
Norton Identity Safe, our super easy to use password manager that is built into our Norton security products and available in our browser toolbar is now cloud-enabled and in beta test. This means, my good friend, you will be able to log in with a single, master password and access all your stored passwords from anywhere and on nearly any device. You’ll set up your master install on your main computer, then install the app on your iPhone, your iPad, your Android phone and tablet, and/or your other computer.
And there are some new features we’re all going to love – you can review your stored passwords as images, and then just click on the website you want to login to; you can safely share online content by sending web links through email and social networking plug-ins, directly from Norton Identity Safe beta. Sweet. I hate trying to send someone a link to an article and being asked to login, again, to my microblog or social network. I just want one login and for everything to work, without me ripping out my hair or running all over the house to start over at the one computer with all the stored data. Now mobile can really be full powered computing!
Check out these nifty screenshots of the beta product in action:
Norton Identity Safe is in beta for your mobile devices beginning today. Visit this website for the latest information and instructions on getting started: https://identitysafe-beta.norton.com
Step by step to get started: (example here is for one primary PC and one mobile device such as an Apple iPad.)
- Install free Norton Identity Safe beta on your primary computer by downloading from https://identitysafe-beta.norton.com. (If you are already a user of Norton 360 or Norton Internet Security 2012, you can skip steps 1 and 2).
- During installation, set up your Norton Identity Safe and enter your desired login information for your accounts, credit card to store for online shopping, and personal information for online form filling.
- Using your iPad or other mobile device, search in the app store for Norton Identity Safe beta.
- Install the app on your mobile device and login using your Norton Identity Safe account and Vault logins.
- Now, you can safely login into your online accounts, shop and have forms filled in with your personal data with ease.