Social media sites, gaming sites, banking and credit card sites, and many others all require you to enter a set of login credentials before you’re allowed access. You might even need a set to login to your computer at work. As tempting as it is to just use the same credentials for everything, experts recommend against it. If a data thief were to steal those credentials, he’d have the keys to your whole kingdom.

Security experts say that you should have at least three sets of credentials. One for personal, social, or gaming sites, one for financial or business sites, and one for you computer at work. The main reason, is that some gaming and social media sites have had problems with security. Some have had vulnerabilities, such as SQL Injection problems, that have allowed data thieves to break in and steal passwords. By having different sets of credentials, you can give more protection to the sites with more sensitive data.

Of course, there’s also a possibility that credentials could get stolen from other sites, as well. To protect against this, you could assign different credentials to each individual site, instead of using the above three categories.

There’s also the temptation to use credentials that are short and easy to remember. Some people may use the name of their spouse or of a pet. The problem with this, is that it makes it easier for data thieves to either guess or crack your credentials.

But, good strong credentials could be hard to remember. So, the temptation is to write them down. Now, that’s okay, as long as you keep the paper in a secure place, like your billfold. Even so, if you have a lot of credentials, that’s really an unwieldy way to keep track of them.

Some web browsers have a built-in utility to store credentials for different websites, but this method can sometimes be vulnerable. Security researchers have been searching for ways to remotely exploit this feature.

There are many different programs available that can help you keep track of your login information. Many of these will allow you to generate strong credentials, and then store all of the information in an encrypted database. You’d then only need to remember one set of credentials, in order to access all of the others.

Many of these programs are cross-platform, and will work on Windows, MacOS, Linux, or even hand-held devices. You can share the same database across all supported platforms.

If you search the web, you’ll find lots of information about password tools.