Thursday, November 15, 2012

How to manage passwords with Keychain Access

How to manage passwords with Keychain Access:


In the innocent days of our computing youth, many of us had to memorize just one password—the one we used to send and retrieve our email over a glacially slow dial-up connection. User-account passwords? For geeks. Shopping-site passwords? What shopping sites? iTunes Store? App Store? Mac App Store? Didn't exist.

In what may seem like a step backward, we now juggle dozens of passwords. We have passwords for logging on to our Macs, accessing our iOS devices, checking our email, receiving instant messages and texts, purchasing real and virtual goods, yacking on social networking services, streaming music and movies—the list goes on and on.

Fortunately, we no longer need to scribble down each and every password on a hunk of binder paper that we tape to our desks in plain sight. Our Macs can store these passwords and, in many cases, automatically fill them in when needed. But there’s more to know about passwords and the Mac's ability to store them than the simple fact that they exist. Here's a quick guide to what you can—and can’t—do with OS X’s passwords.


Keychains are key


Ever since Mac OS 8.6, the Mac has managed passwords with Keychain, Apple’s password-management system. The Keychain Access application (/Applications/Utilities) is a front-end to that system. It stores a wide variety of items—including passwords for email, websites, servers, network shares, Wi-Fi networks, and encrypted disk images. Additionally, it can store secure notes, private keys, and certificates. Whenever you save a password—whether you're prompted by an application or you're saving a website’s password—it’s stored in the Mac’s keychain.

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