Firstly, a big Congratulations to Sheryl for passing her Apple Certification Test.
We are having a sale: All in-stock iPhone and iPod Cases are 25% off. Stop by the store and have a look.
New iPhones, MacBook Pros and MacBook Airs were announced yesterday in San Francisco. While we aren't allowed to sell iPhones we can help you make purchasing decisions and set them up for you.
Passwords and User Names- oh the pain!
Please enter your user name and password...one of the most dreaded phrases spewed forth from our computers. Your email wants to know your password, even though 10 minutes ago it knew the password and got the mail fine. Or perhaps it’s your favorite news site that’s asking for your password so it can show you your customized news. It is daunting to keep all of this info straight. Most security gurus will tell you to keep different passwords for your accounts so if one account is compromised the others won’t be at risk. But in our normal, I don’t work for Jack Bauer at CTU, world we find this security overkill. And what good is a password if it’s so complicated you can’t remember it? On the other end of the security spectrum people use their names, kid’s names or pet’s names as passwords. These are easily guessed and should be avoided if possible. People will also put stickie notes on their screens with user names and passwords. While this isn’t a huge deal in your own home it’s a big problem in an office environment. Plus it’s a less than orderly way of dealing with your ever growing list of secrets; scraps of paper everywhere. So let’s look at how your Mac can help you and maybe already is helping you remember your sign in information.
Apple’s Keychain is the way your Mac assists you in remembering some of your many user names and passwords. It works with Apple’s Mail and Safari and also with Airport (wireless networking). But where do you find the info that’s remembered by the keychain you might be wondering? Where we need to look is an application called Keychain Access, located in the Utilities folder. The easiest way to get there is by doing this: click on the happy faced guy in the dock (Finder) and then go to the top of the screen and click on the Go menu. Choose Utilities from the Go menu and it will open up the folder. Inside the Utilities folder you’ll find the Keychain Access Application. If you double-click on the Keychain Access icon it will open up to show you the things it’s remembered for you. The picture below illustrates the window that should come up when you double-click on the Keychain Access application. Of course, the names listed will be sites you visit and email accounts you use.
So how do you make use of this information? Double-click on any one of the items listed in the Keychain Access window. A good one to open might be the mail.optonline.net entry. Many of us on the East End use cablevision and this is a practical one to view. Once you double-click on the entry you will get another box that pops up in front of you. If you chose to double-click on the optonline entry you should see the box below come up.
Once you confirm that the account you are accessing is the correct one (look at the Account field above, it should be the first part of your email address in this case) you need to click on the 'Show password' checkbox at the bottom left of the Attributes section. Once you click the checkbox you'll get another window (just like the one below) where you need to enter your computer's password if you have one.
Essentially this box asking you for your 'login' keychain password is making sure you are the owner of the machine and as such should be allowed access to this confidential information. You might not have a password for your computer although every user is different. If you have no password for the 'login' then leave the field blank and click 'allow'. If you have a password for your computer (if when you install software your computer asks for a password and you enter one then you need to enter that password here) enter it and click 'allow'. It's not a good idea to click 'always allow' since this means anyone with access to your machine will be able to look at this particular password without any safeguards. Once you click on 'allow' then you will get a window like the one below.
If you look to the right of the 'Show password' field you will now see the password for the account revealed. Seems straightforward enough, hopefully. Now let's mention a couple of caveats. If you have a look at the first picture above you'll see the listing of all the keychain entries with columns heading of name, kind, date modified, etc. You might need to sort the list by the date modified (click on the words date modified and the list will sort chronologically) to make sure you are looking at the most recent account/password combination. Here's another issue you might encounter when trying to determine a forgotten password. A drawback of the keychain, since it's not all knowing, is that it remembers the passwords you enter (if you ask it to) without regard to whether they are right or wrong. The picture below illustrates how Safari prompts you to 'save this password'. Trouble is that you have to commit to saving the password before you actually know if it works.
So your Keychain can have passwords saved that are incorrect. If while investigating a forgotten password you encounter wrong passwords then you might as well delete that particular keychain entry so in the future you have less to wade through when trying to locate your passwords.
The Keychain Access program can do other things and certainly can be explored in more depth. But for most of our run of the mill needs though the info in this newsletter should be enough to get you most of your saved account information; as long as what you are looking for is collected by Safari, Mail or Airport.
The limitations of the Keychain lead me to discuss how another popular web browser remembers and stores account information. If you are using Firefox then the Keychain won’t do you much good because it doesn't work with Firefox. Instead you need to go to the Preferences of Firefox (open Firefox, click on its name at the top left of the screen and choose Preferences) and choose the Security icon at the top of the window. Once you are in the Security section click on the ‘Saved Passwords…’ button on the right, near the bottom.
This will show you the websites Firefox has remembered info about. If you want to learn the password for a site just click on the ‘Show Password’ button. It will then add a column showing the passwords for the sites. Firefox also allows you to put a Master Password in place so that you or anyone else would have to enter this master password in order for it to show any passwords you have saved. It’s a good idea to create a master password in Firefox if you have sensitive info (banking, brokerage, facebook) stored in here. I know it’s yet another password but…
Let's talk briefly about Apple's Mail and its annoying habit of asking you for your password. If the Mail tries to get your email and for whatever reason can't (internet was down for a second, the account was inaccessible for whatever reason, your account at dot Mac/MobileMe has expired) then Mail starts asking you for your password(s). Try this: quit Mail, check that you are connected to the internet-open Safari or Firefox and load up a page. If you are online then re-open Mail and hopefully it will just connect up to your email account(s) and get your mail. If not then you might need to put in the password for the account when you are prompted by that annoying window. If you don't remember then read the beginning of this newsletter again and poke around the keychain access application to locate the password. Another thing that happens that can mess us up is that we might have the correct password, we enter it correctly and it still tells us it's wrong. At this point some people will try to enter any and every password they can remember in hopes of getting it correct. But here's the problem with that approach, it might be that the account-optonline, road runner, aol, gmail-might actually be having troubles of their own, and by you attempting to re-enter all those passwords, your keychain will save an incorrect password. When the service comes back online the wrong password will be saved and you will continue to have this problem. The best way to handle this is if you are typing in your password and you know it is the correct password, stop and wait a few minutes. See if you can find out if their mail is down and it has nothing to do with your system or your internet, try again a bit later and if the problem is still happening try getting the email through a web browser. Some of the common web addresses for checking email online are gmail (gmail.com), AOL (webmail.aol.com), optonline (webmail.optonline.net), Godaddy (email.secureserver.net), Road Runner (https://webmail.nyc.rr.com/, me.com). If you can get your mail this way then the problem is most probably your computer, if you can not then it is most definitely on the side of the provider.
So after all this high-tech talk about how to save and access your passwords I'd like to turn the discussion to a decidely low tech, analog solution to our password conundrums. Get a journal and a pen and record, the old fashioned way, all of your user names and passwords. Include a date and the email address you used to setup the account. Write the web address, user name and password down, legibly ;). Keep this journal next to your Mac and be diligent about recording any new or changed information. I like to go to TJ Maxx in Bridgehampton Commons and get the hard-cover notebooks they have for 3 bucks. Long live pen and paper.
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