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Password Safe - a simple, secure password management solution

 

We all know how important is to protect our passwords and how important is to use more than one password for our online accounts. A lot of people use only one main password that works for their personal email box, chat account, bank account or any other accounts with financial connections. This is not a smart thing since if one account is being compromised, it would be really easy for a thief to gain access to all other accounts. In this case, the best thing to do is to use a password manager that can help you to create a different password for each account. We are going to talk about a free software called "Password Safe" which is exactly what we need in order to create and store in a secure way passwords for our accounts. Basically you will see how to install Password Safe and how to store accounts and passwords with this application. Let's get started, first of all you will need to download Password Safe ( latest version ) and choose to save it on your computer. Make sure to remember the location to where you saved the setup file as we are going to open it. Once opened, you should see a similar window with this one, called "license Agreement" - press "I Agree" in order to start the installation :

 

 

The second window will ask you to choose an installation type, you have to choose from "Regular" or "Green" - choose "Regular" for use on a single PC and "Green" for portable installation. If you're not sure then "Regular" should be fine for you. Make sure to press the "Next" button to continue with the installation.

 

 

In the third window, as you can see it will ask you to choose which components to install. As you can see, I didn't wanted to start automatically so I unchecked that box. If you want to start Password Safe when you turn on your computer you should leave that option checked. Make sure to press the "Next" button.

 

 

Now you need to select a location to where Password Safe will be installed. The default location is in "C:\Program Files\Password Safe". If you need to change this default location press on the "Browse" button and select another folder. I chosed to leave this as it is. Press on the "Install" button in order to start the installation.

 

 

If everything went well in a couple of seconds you should see this window which informs us that the installation is now complete. You can now press the "Close" button.

 

 

You have now Password Safe installed on your PC and I will show you how to use this application in order to learn how to store usernames and passwords. Make sure to locate the Password Safe icon on your desktop and make sure to open it. You should now see Password Safe main window for the first time ( actually it's a small window called "Safe Combination Entry" ) but as you may noticed you can't type a Safe Combination yet ( I don't know why they didn't named this simply - Master Password ).

 

 

We will need to create a new database and a "master password" that will offer you access to all other stored passwords. First, let's create a new database, to do this, make sure to create a new folder anywhere on your computer ( in any location - as you can see I went on a my D:\ drive and created a new folder called "Password Safe Folder") and then press on the "New Database" small button located on the main window of Password Safe. Navigate to your desired folder and press the "Save" button. The following picture should give you an idea :

 

 

After this you should be able to type a master password ( Safe Combination ). A new password database will be created. The safe combination you enter will be used to encrypt the password database file. The Safe Combination can use any keyboard character and is case-sensitive. Make sure to enter the same password on both fields ( Safe Combination and Verify ) and press "OK" button.

 

 

You are now "inside" Password Safe, you can now add usernames and passwords, you can customize this application by using options and much more. Let's see how to add a username and a password for example to my email address on yahoo ( this is only an example and it's not my real email address ). Go to "Edit" and press on the "Add Entry".

 

 

Now, in the title section I wrote something that will help me to give me more details and to help me to make a difference in case that I have a lot of other accounts. At the username I wrote my username id, then I entered twice my password and finally I also wrote the URL address. As you can see you can even add more notes. Finally I will press "OK" button.

 

 

Here it is, I finally managed to store my first username and password with Password Safe. If you want to add a new username and a new password, all you need to do is to repeat the entire operation and you will be able to add a second username and password. Add as many as you want.

 

 

That's it, my article called "Password Safe - a simple, secure password management solution" was written to show you how to install Password Safe and how to store accounts and passwords with this application. I didn't mentioned here all the features and options - this is not the purpose of this article but you can use all options if you are able to install and store passwords with this application. If you like this application and want to see future releases it would be excellent to donate to authors of this application ( remember it's free ).