Recently I sat down for a minute and thought about how many usernames and passwords I enter on a daily basis. Between my various e-mail accounts (4), social networking sites (3), my personal blog, the various online games I play (3), access to my work web apps (2), computer authentication password, online banking (4), IM clients (4), and other various logins for commenting on other blogs and miscellaneous sites like eBay, I’ve got literally dozens of passwords and usernames to keep track of.

If you’re like me, you cheat a little. You probably use your e-mail address as a username whenever you can (or recycle the same username), re-use the same password depending on the sensitivity of whatever you’re logging into, and save certain passwords on the sites you visit frequently. Let’s not kid ourselves- we know in the back of our minds that this isn’t the best way to do it, but everybody does it anyways. But is there a better way? Can we keep our really sensitive information safe with the same kind of convenience given by saved passwords, recycled usernames, and re-used passwords?