Month: January 2020

Have you ever tried to open up your saved bookmarks on your browser after an event takes place, such as a power outage, and were shocked to find that they’re not there? Your bookmarks to sites and articles, what you rely on to safely navigate through your day to day work items, are no longer at the ease of your fingertips. If only there were a way to keep those bookmarks saved for good, similar to how you wish you could save the sites you search up, which is the very reason bookmarks were created. If only there were a way that we could bookmark our bookmarks.

Well, luckily there is (so-to-speak). For free! All that’s required is to create an account on either Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox. Unfortunately, this means there is the added annoyance of, yet again, having to create an online account and password; but thanks to your integration of Enpass or LastPass this will no longer pose an annoyance or deterrent to adding another online account. Thank goodness someone has already covered this dilemma previously. All you have to do is choose your favorite, and most frequented, web browser (typically Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox) and create an account. Once you have an account, you can save all of your tabs to that account and cross-integrate those saved items to any device that you open up on the browser you have chosen (after logging into your account). Not only does this save you from losing these bookmarks when your computer goes down, or when a power outage wipes your bookmarks, but it also allows you to link up your work bookmarks with your home bookmarks as well. You, of course, have freedom in your account as to what you want linked up across devices when you login to your account on multiple outlets. So if you don’t want your browser history linked, for example, but you want your bookmarks linked then you are now able to have that option.

This is revelatory and triumphant news, for those of us that have gone through the annoyance of losing all our cached items in our web browser after an unexpected power outage or computer failure. I know it’s a question that often gets posed after a power outage, “where did all my bookmarks go?” and this is an article to answer any future questions on the topic. Down below I’ve provided some links to the Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox account creation page. Follow the links and quickly create an account to avoid future issues with lost and non-malleable bookmark integration. Quick Note: If you have a Google account for things such as Gmail then you already have an account for accessing your saved bookmarks on Chrome. All you have to do now is login to your Google account and save your bookmarks to your account so that when you login to Chrome on another device it integrates those saved bookmarks.

Google:

https://accounts.google.com/signup/v2

Firefox:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/access-mozilla-services-firefox-account

Hope this helps with any confusion about lost bookmarks, both now and in the future.

 

Do you keep the same password for every major site you frequently visit? Perhaps you have a set of 2, 3, or possibly 5 different passwords that you like to cycle through as viable options for your accounts.

The world that we live in today demands us to have passwords for every single account we make and that, for maximum security, those passwords are complex, unique and untraceable. However, it’s not a natural thing for humans to do: remembering highly complex random combination sequences of letters and numbers.

So, that’s why there are companies that have capitalized on that dilemma and provided an opportunity for you to sync all of your passwords to one account and manage the rest of your account logins from there. You can go back to remembering one password: the one that gets you into this third party program. From there, it will autogenerate random sequences of numbers and letters for your synced accounts so that you don’t have to. Then, when you go to access that account, you simply circle back to this third party program and access your information.

A reliable company that does this is Enpass and I’ve provided a link to their site for you to check out here:

https://www.enpass.io/

Their desktop version is free, and their mobile app (which syncs to your desktop version) has a free lite option (capable of saving 25 password accounts). If you’re interested in saving more than 25 account passwords then there’s a full mobile version available for $6 a year (monthly basis of $0.49 a month) OR a one cost buy in of $39.99 if you expect to use it for more than 6 years.

Another reliable company to check out for essentially the same features, is LastPass. Their link is located here:

https://www.lastpass.com/how-lastpass-works

LastPass has a slight variant from Enpass, in that it works through your browser. It has an app function as well that links to your main account but on your desktop it is operated as a browser tab extension. The pricing for it breaks down similarly to Enpass, except that it lacks the one cost option. The only option is on a monthly basis; but it does offer a family plan for you and your members that includes up to 6 users for only $1.35 extra a month. Overall, it is a more pricey option than Enpass: $4.01/month for Premium and $5.35/month for families. So, it’s a significant jump in price when compared to Enpass, but it does offer the ability to link up multiple users under one umbrella and sounds like it has an easier time transferring your passwords through to the integration process of logging into accounts. So if the price jump is worth it for the easier access and joint users, then the LastPass option makes more sense.

If you have an Apple product at home and at work then another option to use would be Apple Keychain. Unfortunately, most of us at work have Windows devices for our operations within the school. That means that for the majority of us, this isn’t an option. However, if you’re able to operate solely on Mac devices in your life then Apple Keychain is another option that also happens to be free. Here is a link to help you understand more about Apple Keychain, if that is an avenue that you wish to go down for at least your personal items at home:

https://support.apple.com/en-ca/guide/keychain-access/kyca1083/mac

These are just some things to consider as an alternative to using the same passwords over and over again for different accounts and risking a hacker gaining access to all your accounts through the cracking of one password. The world we live in expects us to be robots that can generate random passwords out of thin air and then remember each individual one indefinitely, regardless of how infrequent the use of it is. I’m simply suggesting a solution that doesn’t tax your memory with useless information, while still maintaining your account security, so that you can focus on the more important things.