These days many of us have tens or hundreds of passwords to remember: for work, for home, for social networks, for banking, for email, and even for BackupBob! Keeping track of all of these passwords can be hard work, and many users resort to using the same password everywhere (which means that if one site is hacked then all of your services are vulnerable), or making their passwords simple and memorable (which probably means that they’re easy to guess). But using a strong and unique password for every site means you have to have somewhere to write them down – and that’s where password managers come in.

A password manager is a piece of software that securely stores all of your passwords in one place. This means that you can access your passwords at any time, and it allows you to use more complicated passwords that are unique to each service you access – one password for your email, one password for Facebook, and one password for your online banking for example. Many password managers will automatically generate long and complicated passwords for you, which are extremely difficult to crack. As long as your password manager stays secure then all of your passwords stay safe – if one of the services that you use is hacked, then only that service is compromised and all of the other accounts you have elsewhere are still safe.

Password managers are not for everybody – some security experts point out that you’re putting all of your eggs in one basket and that if your password manager is hacked then suddenly everything is opened up. And it is possible to break into any password manager using brute force or by installing spyware on your computer to monitor your keystrokes. But most experts agree that it is more secure to manage your passwords this way than use weak keys or share the same password between many services – your one password file is far less likely to be targeted by a hacker than the entire user list at Gawker for example.

A very popular and easy to use password manager is the open source KeePass Password Safe for Windows. Not only is this software free, it’s extremely lightweight – you can even run the entire program from a memory stick. And with its sister project KeePassX providing compatibility with Mac and Linux PCs, and versions available for the iPhone/iPad and Android devices, it’s completely portable – so you can use it to access your passwords almost anywhere you go. KeePass uses powerful AES encryption to encrypt your passwords into a simple file – called a KDB file – which you can keep anywhere.

The only challenge with KeePass is keeping your password file up to date on all of your devices, and that’s where your BobDrive Sync comes in! Simply save the KDB file onto your network drive and it’s synced between all of your computers – meaning that you can access the same password database wherever you are – even on your iPhone:

You can even put Portable KeePass onto your BobDrive so that you can run KeePass from any computer you’re using, even if it’s not yours – just make sure you trust the PC you’re running it on.

So with BackupBob and KeePass together you can make your online life far more secure without sacrificing the convenience of being able to access all of your services wherever you go. Maybe you have an alternative solution, or you use a different password manager. If so, let us know in the comments below!