Yesterday was one of those days. I received an email from Kickstarter (along with many other people) telling me their security had been breached, passwords had been stolen but they were still encrypted and it was only a matter of time before the hackers would crack them. They recommended changing the Kickstarter password and any other accounts where we use the same password.

I see you rolling your eyes, how could anyone be so stupid as to use one password for multiple sites. That was me…before I made an investment and bought myself a password protection programme, I had lots of logins for websites and I was trying to minimise the not so important ones. My bank accounts, Paypal and other important websites all used different ones but I had 39 other websites which used the same password. Now I don’t.

Security is very important in this day and age. You’ve got people who insist on hacking into websites and taking data that doesn’t belong to them. Some of them we applaud such as Wikileaks (although, should we be applauding them as they’re stealing data that doesn’t belong to them?) while others we revile. There are so many people trying to hack into your website that it is bound to happen at some stage. I have the best security I can but it didn’t extend to these passwords.

Since investing in a password safe I’ve been making a small effort to change these passwords but I hadn’t been putting enough time into the project. I love my password programme, I was able to put the particular password into the search field and it brought up every time I’d used it so I was able to work my way through the list and change them. The programme can also generate good and safe passwords so each one now has its own unique and hard-to-crack password. When I did my search I found 39 instances of that password, some of these had already been changed but I’d kept a note of the old password but all the others needed to be changed. Some of the websites no longer exist so I put a note in there while a couple need someone at the other end to work on the problem for me as their software doesn’t work well with me. Out of those 39 I’m down to two and only one of these is important.

A few words about password programmes in general. This list is a current review of 10 password programmes costing varying amount of money, mine isn’t there but I’m not changing. I have mSecure, I bought it for my iPad, my Android phone and my Windows based computer so it cost me three times what it should have but it’s been well worth it. This means I only have to remember one password and when I get old and stupid I’ll still only have to remember one password. When I’m out and about and I’ve forgotten the PIN for my card I can just look it up and have done so on a number of occasions.

Thank you to Kickstarter for letting us know about their breach of security, I now feel much happier knowing I’ve changed those passwords.