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Locking Down Your Passwords with KeePass

1:00 PM - May 7, 2004 by Patrick Schmid

1. A Portable Password Safe: KeePass & USB Stick
2. KeePass Password Safe
3. KeePass Configuration
4. Creating A New Password Database

What a mess: You've got separate logins and passwords for your credit cards, bank accounts, email, servers and a myriad of other online accounts. You even have other top-secret data in that one, all-to-vulnerable file, such as your mistress' phone number and other information for your eyes only, just waiting for that one wrong person to access. Worse still, when you travel, you have to take all that good stuff with you on a flash memory drive - and losing something as small as that is just as easy as leaving behind an umbrella in a New York cab.

Luckily, a freeware utility called KeePass has come along which lets you encrypt your passwords, so that even if the wrong party finds your password file, he or she can't access the data. How well does this utility work when used for portable applications and on a tiny USB memory stick from Iomega?