[jambutty]

The way to remember random character passwords WillowTheWisp is to make yourself a document listing all your passwords and who they are for and copy and paste from it when logging in anywhere. There is a tiny glitch in this strategy in that there are web sites and Trojans that can read your Windows clipboard and send the data to their head office. Have a look at http://www.sourcecodesworld.com/special/clipboard.asp for proof. Copy something to your Windows clipboard first.

You need to do the following to prevent someone from reading your clipboard.
Open Internet Explorer
Go to Menu Tools>Internet Options>Security>Select a security zone (Internet)>Custom Level>Scripting>Allow paste operations via script – set this to prompt.
If something tries to read your clipboard it will be blocked and you will receive a prompt asking you whether to allow it or not.

Better still get hold of RoboForm Pro with a free version available from http://www.roboform.com/ The free version will only hold 12 passwords but 12 is better than none. The Pro version, with more features, costs about $40, has unlimited storage capacity and has free updates for life. Umpteen million users can’t be wrong.

My on-line bank is similar to yours WTW, yet once my details have been accepted I get taken to a page that asks me to confirm that my street address is as is stated. I mean if someone had managed to steal my logging in details the next bit isn’t going to do anything to stop them from entering my account, is it?

The best and most secure logging in system that I have ever come across is one used by Asian Pay. You can opt to receive a secure card and use that to log in instead of the more normal user name, password and ubiquitous Turing type number.

The secure card is delivered from Thailand (because that is where Asian Pay is based) by Registered Post and mine took just 3 days. It is also displayed when you register to receive the card so that you can print it out if you want to.

It is a grid of 6 letters A to F across the top and bottom and numbers 1 to 5 down each side with a variety of unique to you mixture of letters and numbers in the grid. They ask you to input 4 lots. E.g. B5 – A2 – F3 – D1 and you input what ever corresponds to those indicators.

With 30 ‘boxes’ each containing any one of 36 characters that is 36 ^ 30 different combinations. That is 48,873,677,980,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 ,000,000,000 so no one will have a secure card that is identical to anyone else.