Just like Nic Wolff, I hate remembering passwords. Nic created a brilliant password generator which uses a master password, the site name (or domain name), and a bit of MD5 encryption - this produces a different password for each site, and it's impossible to reverse-engineer your original master password from it. Now, you only need one password, and no amount of embarrassing SQL hacks will worry you. Hurray.
Nick produced a bookmarklet to generate this password. Johannes la Poutré produced an excellent Greasemonkey script which almost automates the entire thing if you use Firefox. It's just brilliant.
Just above is the version I use.
And, of course, I can't necessarily install the bookmarklet or extension on all the machines I use. I need a back-up, in other words - particularly for the situations where I can't access an online version.
So, here's a version that works on all Microsoft Pocket PC or Smartphone models. It's just an HTML file, so just copy it and open it. It uses exactly the same code as Nic's, so should be 100% compatible.
Installation
- Right-click to save the password generator
- Connect your device to your PC
- In ActiveSync, 'Explore' to the My Documents folder
- Copy 'password-generator.html' there
- Use the file manager to open it. For Smartphone:
-- Click 'Start' and go to the 'Accessories' folder
-- Choose 'File Manager' and navigatge to find the password-generator.html file
-- Click it to open it
-- Click 'Menu' then 'Add Favourite'
-- Click 'Add'
-- Now it's in your favourites whenever you need to use it
(It's only been tested on Windows Mobile 2003, by the way. It'll probably look ugly on earlier versions.)
These are my personal views and not those of the BBC | Full disclosure | FAQ | Contact me | More Cridland stuff at www.cridland.net