I have more than a thousand accounts in various websites. A majority of these accounts are inactive, while I use around 30 accounts regularly. Every day I sign up for 3-5 web services. So the accounts I own in the web are growing like nothing.
Managing all these online accounts is getting difficult for me day by day. I almost use the same username for the different accounts, but in some accounts, I have different usernames. And with different password for each account, it is getting really messy. Which username password combination for which account…? grrr…..
I need some software to manage my accounts. Who should manage my accounts?
My web browser. Not any third party add-on. Not any spyware disguised as friendly software.
If we have excellent mechanisms in the browser for managing online acccounts, it will be useful in designing protocols to create, edit or delete our accounts from a single window. This can in effect lead to great advancements in data portability.
Meanwhile, what are the browser vendors waiting for? I think Opera or Firefox should integrate a full fledged account management system to the browser. IE will follow.
Well, the same thing goes to me. For email, I have GMail, Hotmail, University email, Yahoo Mail (for Yahoo Messenger), Facebook, yada yada…
I believe Thunderbird can manage my email but haven’t try it. For other account (hosting, forums, professional membership, etc), I prefer to just write it down in my diary, for example:
IET: (username)
Password: (first character & last character)
Thus, even when I forgot, I just look at my own hint. It’s not a good idea but at least, I have few combinations of these numbers.
The otherday I was trying to signup for a forum and found I already have a account there back in 2006! Password management is good in firefox already, but managing the account itself needs a lot of security…good idea for a new product there Niyaz….hmm….*goes off to the drawing board
Rafie,
Thanks for coming by.
Many web workers are resorting to password forming/storing strategies like the one you use. I think it is due to the lack of help from our browsers.
TheAnand,
Waiting for your product !!!
niyaz, you may like roboform: http://www.roboform.com/
personally though, i am working on something that is, imho, better then that. but it won’t be in the browser (for various reasons).
I am surprised you don’t use KeePass.
Silky,
I have been using RoboForm, but I am not happy with the functionality. I think we need a more portable and flexible solution. Something like a account managing platform on which we can build future web apps.
Bipin,
Thanks for the link. I will check it out soon.
Hello,
Nice post, I am biased since I work for Vidoop, but I think myVidoop should manage all our online accounts (at least mine anyways).
I use http://myvidoop.com for my OpenID provider. With that service they also provide a password manager that lets me manage my normal logins and passwords. I can store my password locally or online with myVidoop, there are lots of other cool options as well. The plugin is for FF and IE.
Anywho just my two cents, thanks for letting me share.
-K
Kevin,
Thanks for sharing.
[...] every month. We don’t have time to catch up with the development and progress of them. We sign-up for an account in some of them and we [...]
I don’t see the browser keeping track of credentials as a solution since I use SmartPhone, work computer, home computer, my own laptop sometimes all in the same day to access various accounts on the web. Then I re-install and OS or get a new computer every once in a while…
What we could do with is a standard approach to username and password rules so that we can choose to use the same username and password everywhere. But then people will want to use email address as username and peoples email address can change.
High security sites like internet banking can stay seperate and do their own thing as far as I am concerned, security is much more important than conveniance here and I only want to access this kind of site from my home computer.
i think you should look at Flock(web browser)