The main problem is that of human memory. It is of course not reasonable to expect the user to remember 100+ unique passwords. In most cases, the end result is that users will reuse the same password for multiple sites and systems. The issues with this are obvious: if a malicious third party gets hold of one password, it compromises all where the password was used; also, by piecing together the other bits of data entered at registration (such as date of birth, gender, physical address, mother’s maiden name etc.) for different sites, the attacker might be able to create a very accurate profile which could then be used to gain access to even those systems where a different password was used.

That’s why I use a password management program, in particular KeePass/KeePassX. It allows one to securely store credentials and is itself protected by strong encryption and can only be accessed using a password. In reality one finds that on a daily basis it is sufficient to remember 5-10 most frequently used passwords (computer login, email, Google, social network, internet banking and of course the password manager itself) and the rest can be referred to from KeePass. The program has a feature to generate random passwords, which is ideal to have strong passwords for infrequently accessed systems where one might not even realise the account was hacked for a long period of time. KeePass can even be installed in portable mode, which means you can carry the program and your encrypted passwords file on a USB stick.

I found that KeePass (version 1 for Windows) and KeePassX (Linux and Mac) suit my needs perfectly. There is also a version for Android and iPhone (refer to the Wikipedia article). Best of all? It’s free software licensed under GPL.


Sub save_as_vcf()
  Dim i, ncount As Integer
  Dim fullname As String
  Set ofolder = Application.ActiveExplorer.CurrentFolder
  Set oitems = ofolder.Items
  ncount = oitems.Count
  MsgBox "Count is " & ncount
  For i = 1 To ncount
    Set oitem = oitems.Item(i)
    fullname = oitem.fullname
    oitem.SaveAs "D:\Export\" & fullname & ".vcf", olVCard
  Next
  MsgBox "Done"
End Sub


To open the dialog manually and remove the device cleanly, run the following command from the Windows Run dialog (Start > Run):

RUNDLL32.EXE SHELL32.DLL,Control_RunDLL HotPlug.dll

1. Open the following file in Notepad: C:\Documents and Settings\<your user>\Application Data\VMware\preferences.ini (the drive might be different depending on your setup).
2. Add the following line at the end and save:
   
   mks.noBeep = "TRUE"

3. Open the virtual machine’s VMX configuration file in Notepad.
4. Add the following line (same as above) at the end and save:
   
   mks.noBeep = "TRUE"

5. Launch VMware Player and run the virtual machine – the beep should be gone!

To prevent the automatic startup, open Registry Editor and remove the value “oc4j” under the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run.

There is also a way to make OC4J into a Windows service, although I haven’t tried this myself.