91. Safely Store IDs and Passwords on Your Device  BEFORE YOU BEGIN 87 About BlackBerry Security
 SEE ALSO 5 Lock and Unlock Your Device 6 Password-Protect Your Device 88 Secure the SIM Card 90 Protect Your Content 92 Register Your Device with StuffBak
Anyone who uses the Internet regularly can attest to the frustration in having too many user IDs and passwords floating around. Many websites now require registration with an ID and password, which means you have to remember the ID and password if you want to access the website in the future. Although modern browsers do a good job of remembering this information to aid you in entering it, they don't necessarily help you if you're traveling or you delete your stored cookies. This is where a central repository of stored IDs and passwords comes in handy. The Password Keeper application ships with most BlackBerry devices and allows you to enter user IDs and passwords for safe keeping. The idea is that you create a single password for Password Keeper and then use it to access your master list of IDs and passwords. This password list can extend beyond websitesyou can enter PINs for bank accounts and just about any access code or password you want. Just be sure you are careful about setting the Password Keeper password because it holds the key to all the others. | 1. | Open the Tools Screen
Scroll to the Tools icon on the Home screen and click the trackwheel. The Tools screen appears, showing a list of tools options.
| | 2. | Launch the Password Keeper Application To launch the Password Keeper application, scroll the trackwheel to select the Password Storage icon and click. The Password Keeper application begins by prompting you to enter a password for the application; this password is used to protect all the user IDs and passwords you'll enter into Password Keeper . 91. Safely Store IDs and Passwords on Your Device   NOTE If you don't see the Password Storage icon on your device, the Password Keeper application might not have been installed by default on your device. This likely means you have an older version of the BlackBerry operating system; Password Keeper was added in version 4.0 of the BlackBerry OS. To find out how to upgrade the BlackBerry OS to the latest version, see "Upgrading Your Device to the Latest BlackBerry OS" in Chapter 1. | | 3. | Enter a Password for Password Keeper Using the keyboard, enter the password, making sure that it is at least four characters long. When you enter a password, each character is shown briefly as you type it before it is turned into an asterisk. This is helpful because your password will likely require different keystrokes depending on whether you use alphabetic or numeric input mode. Password entry is always carried out in multitap mode, but you can switch between alphabetic or numeric characters by briefly holding down the Next key ( * ). Alphabetic multitap mode is always selected by default when you enter a password, so I recommend sticking with an alphabetic password as opposed to a numeric one. TIP Alphabetic multitap mode is the default mode for entering passwords, which means you have to constantly switch to numeric mode to enter a numeric password or press the Shift key for each number. I recommend using an alphabetic password instead of a numeric one so that you don't have to change to numeric mode every time you enter the password. As an example, "CUTE" is a much better password option than its numeric equivalent, "7321". You must enter the password twice to ensure that you entered it consistently. Scroll the trackwheel to select the OK button when you're finished entering the password and its confirmation, and then click. You are taken to the main Password Keeper screen, which contains a list of stored passwords and user IDs; initially this list is empty because you haven't created any password entries. | | 4. | Create a New Password Entry
To create a new password entry, click the trackwheel and select New from the menu that appears. Click once more, and the New Password screen appears.
| | 5. | Enter the Password Details The New Password screen is where you enter a new password to store in the Password Keeper application. A password entry consists of five pieces of information, which correspond to the following data fields: Title, Username, Password, Website , and Notes . The Title field simply stores the name of the password, which is typically the service to which it provides access, such as AOL, eBay, or Amazon. The Username and Password fields are fairly self-explanatory in that they represent the principle information being stored (username/ID and password). The website address of the service with which the password and username are associated is stored in the Website field. And finally, optional text notes regarding the password entry can be entered in the Notes field. TIP If you struggle to create unique passwords that are difficult for potential hackers to figure out, consider allowing Password Keeper to create a random password for you. Just click the trackwheel, select Random Password from the menu that appears, and click once more. A random password is created and placed in the Password field for you. Keep in mind that you must log in to the actual website for the password entry and change your old password to the new random password. After entering the specifics for the new password entry, click the trackwheel and select Save from the menu that appears. Click once more to save the entry and return to the main Password Keeper screen. There you see the new password entry in the list. | | 6. | Tweak Password Keeper Options
The Password Keeper application includes some options you might want to change to customize the application so it better suits your needs. To access these options, click the trackwheel, scroll to select Options , and click again. Several of these options relate to the random passwords you can generate using Password Keeper . For example, you can set exactly how many characters are in the randomly generated passwords, along with whether the passwords contain alphabetic characters, letters , or symbols. I find that symbols are usually hard to remember and enter for passwords, so I recommend setting the Random Includes Symbols option to False .
The remaining options on the Password Keeper Options screen include Confirm Delete , which determines whether you have to confirm the deletion of password entries. The Password Attempts field determines how many attempts you are given to incorrectly enter the password for Password Keeper before the application clears out all the password entries and resets itself. This setting is designed to protect your passwords from someone trying to hack and figure out the Password Keeper password.
The last two options are related in that the Allow Clipboard Copy setting becomes important if you disable the Show Password setting. If you set the Show Password option to False , none of the passwords are shown within the Password Keeper application; they are instead displayed as a series of asterisks ( * ). This means you won't really have a way of looking at and determining what the password is. However, if you leave the Allow Clipboard Copy option set to True , you can select a password and copy it to the clipboard. You can then paste the password into a website in the BlackBerry browser and effectively look up and enter a password without ever seeing its actual value on the screen.
After changing any Password Keeper options, press the Escape button to exit the Password Keeper Options screen. If you changed any settings, you are prompted to save or discard changes. When prompted, scroll the trackwheel to the Save option and click to save the changes. You then return to the main Password Keeper screen.
| | 7. | Exit the Application
When you finish using Password Keeper , press the Escape button twice to exit the application and navigate back to the Home screen, or just press the End key once.
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