Password Protection for Social Networking

Here is a neat way to better password protect your profiles on all those social networks. Most people tend to use the same password again and again because they can’t remember hundreds. They still need somewhere to store them all as well.

This tool, though, lets you remember ONE password. You then combine it with the domain you are logging into. So “password” combined with “facebook.com” will always generate “3d46176a”. So something nice and unique, and retrievable when you are sitting in a Las Vegas hotel lobby thinking “sod it, he’s on my Linked In network… and I don’t have my master password file”.

Why is this good? Well one password is intrinsicly unsafe, as are generic ones. But this becomes even more problematic when you combine widgets and gadgets between social networks. You end up giving out passwords to gadgets all over the place. If you layer this… use your generic password with the gadget URL, then use the result with each social profile that the gadget uses, then you might just start protecting yourself… a bit.

The Google Gadget coding should be credited to Zsolt Molnar – Helsinki, Finland and I got the original idea from here.