We all likely have lots of them — or at least lots of places that want them: usernames and passwords. Our kids are no exception.
To comment on this post, you’ll need a username and password specific to wired.com. To read your email (if you use an online service) will require a username and password. It seems that people generally fall into a couple categories, those that use the same username and password for everything and those that have completely different or variations on a theme for passwords across the places they log in.
CC Photo by reidrac via flickr
We’ve heard the stories of the Post-it Notes on the monitor or keyboard, or the person who dutifully stores their usernames and passwords in an Excel spreadsheet titled, you guessed it, passwords.xls. There have been people that suggest you write down your passwords, and there are any numbers of people working to develop password storing applications…
My youngest children have a couple of usernames/passwords — the one to log in to the family computer and their logins to Webkinz and Club Penguin. They don’t (yet) have email and they aren’t on Facebook or the other social sharing sites. I want to start them off with an appreciation that a strong password is going to be one of the most important things to keep in mind when joining a new service.
Having said that, I’m just beginning a search for a way for them to be able to keep track of their usernames and their passwords as their use of online services grows (so they aren’t storing them in passwords.xls), and I’m wondering if there are solutions you’ve used … specifically for kids?
If you have, can you share with the GeekDad community things about the app like:
- Ease of use
- Portability (can I run it from a USB drive?)
- Device independence (does it work across Macs and PCs?)
I’m intrigued by SuperGenPass as a possibility for browser-based passwords, but I’m also interested to see what the wisdom of the GeekDad collective unearths. Please leave a comment with your thoughts on the subject.
