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A simple password is an ineffective password. A single password that you use for multiple purposes is a risky password. By the time you cover all the bases—complex, mixed upper- and lower case, alphanumeric and punctuation marks, no dictionary words—you've got a list of great passwords, but alas now you can't remember any of them. You need a "password locker" tool to keep track of them all. That's fine, as long as you always sit at the same desk with the same machine. What if you're out and about and need one of your passwords? Now you're in trouble. Enter Passpack.

Passpack is an online password manager tool. You can enter up to 100 entries for free, and they don't have to be just passwords. Save emergency info, travel info, confirmation numbers, all that sort of thing. The one thing they do ask is that you not store financial information here. Should everything go south, it's one thing if somebody can log into your blog; it's a totally different matter if they should log into your bank account and clean you out.

For most purposes, Passpack should give you plenty of security for your data. You always connect via secure HTTPS connections, and your data is super-encrypted as it sits on their servers. They've even got "disposable log-ins" for use on public computers. Pretty cool.

Passpack is a free service, and should be compatible with most modern web browsers.

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How many passwords and logins do you have to keep track of? Work, home, banking, various online accounts—it's probably anywhere from several to dozens. If you're using reasonable passwords for these accounts—long, a mix of characters, no dictionary words, and different passwords for each account—then it's going to be just about impossible to remember them all. While a bunch of Post-Its stuck on your monitor may be the standard way to save a list like this, it's not really the preferred way. There's just not much security when your passwords scream "Free! Take one!" to anybody who happens to walk by.

Password Safe is an application that lets you keep track of all those passwords, and keeps everybody else out of them. With Password Safe, all you have to do is remember one password, and now all the rest of them are safely tucked away for you. You can choose to store all your information in one database, or you can use multiple ones—one for work, one for home, one for shopping, etc.

Password Safe is available for Windows, and also in a Java version that will run on Linux and Mac machines as well.

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There's all kinds of stuff we need to keep secure. Logins, passwords, credit card info, the list goes on and on. Here's a tool that will keep things as secure as possible.

CiphSafe is an app that lets you easily save login and password pairs, or any other information that you want to keep really, really secure. You create a document that holds all your secret stuff, give it a password, and you're done. Keep all your stuff in one document, or create multiple docs, one for home, another for work, etc. There's room in each entry for a pretty good sized note, so you don't have to worry about coming back later to find some cryptic message whose meaning is now lost to you.

CiphSafe uses a 320-bit key, so it is just about as secure as you can get. This, or course, means that you should never, ever forget your passphrase, because you're not going to get into your document without it.

CiphSafe is a Mac tool. The current release requires OS X 10.4+, but there is a down-rev version still available for users running 10.2.

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We love what the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation does — defending Americans’ rights in the digital age — and have supported them for ages. (And encourage you to do so also.) We also love Tor, a free system for online privacy created by the EFF. Tor helps “anonymize” your web browsing and other online activity, bouncing your traffic around the Internet rather than letting it take a direct route. This “covers your tracks” so curious webmasters, online advertising companies, and just plain sneaky folk can’t tell where the data came from or where it's going. The nifty part is: the more people that use Tor, the better protection of anonymity it provides for everyone who uses it.

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