After reading this horror story, I decided that it was about time to do the right thing with my passwords… and not use the same one everywhere.

But what an ordeal!

Here’s a list of the sites I use regularly and they all had (except for 2) the same password:

• gmail
• flickr
• youtube
• friendfeed
• twitter
• yahoo
• msn/live
• digsby
• timebridge
• skype
• jaymccormack.com
• apple
• emusic
• facebook
• linkedin
• stumbleupon
• toodledo
• tripadvisor
• tripit
• godaddy
• claimid
• yammer

But of course what password, or passwords should I use for all these? Enter RoboForm. I’ve posted about this in the past, it’s a cool password management tool that remembers passwords the first time you use them and then types them for you in the future. But there’s another feature that is a random password generator that creates passwords like “VK3zz44R3&” or “t%FHBj3zN5″. Of course these are had to crack but also hard to type and remember, but with roboform that’s now a snap.

Some experiences with the process: Of all the above sites only one (tripadvisor) decided that the best thing to do after changing the password was to send it to me in a plain text email. Yay! Here I am trying to be all secure and they decide to expose my new password to the world.

Something else with twitter specifically is that because it’s integrated into so many other things I do, I have found out through out the day the number of places that that password was stored. Even wordpress knows my twitter details! So it’s been a little frustrating on that front.

Finally, the iPhone. I use beehive for IM, Tweetie for Twitter and the facebook app, the linkedin app and the yammer app on my iPhone, and each of these needed to be reconfigured. Additionally the synchronisation between my todo list app and toodledo and my travel management app and tripit. Arghhhh!

Finally I had to make one compromise. My Apple password has to be something that I remember and that I can type easily on the iPhone as any app download or purchase on the phone requires you to plug in your password. So in this case I just ramped up the password a little.

So anyway… I think i’m set now. Oh, one more thing, I’ve backed up my roboform passwords in 2 places so that (fingers crossed) i’m not screwed if my PC crashes.