10 Things to Do in Order to Keep Your Password Safe Even If Your Phone Is Stolen

Yes, You need to Keep your Password Safe! From sensitive business documents and credit card PINs to personal diaries and photographs, we tend to have our entire life data stored on our smartphones. In order to keep it safe, we use firewalls and two-factor authentications, encryption and backups. But however sophisticated they are, all the internet protection methods in the world couldn’t prevent the terrible consequences of physical theft.

Luckily, the following 10 things can. Here’s how to keep passwords safe even if your phone gets stolen.

1. It All Starts with Choosing the Strongest Password

Strong, complex passwords are the best defense mechanism against online data theft, but they also keep the contents of your phone safe and secured in case your device gets lost or stolen. The importance of choosing the unbreachable one can’t be overstressed, and should never be overlooked.

Of course, this applies to both your cell phone password, and those you use for protecting individual apps. Not only do they make it nearly impossible for cybercriminals to hack into your device, but they also make it harder for offline thieves to access the sensitive information stored on your phone.

● Creating Uncrackable Passwords

When creating unbreachable passwords, the general rule of thumb is to avoid words, phrases, and numbers that can be easily found on your social media accounts. Birthdays and pet names, street addresses and anniversary dates, social security numbers and phone digits are all pretty weak choices.

To keep passwords secure, choose a phrase that has a meaning only to you. Use as many characters as you can – the stronger passwords are 15-30 characters long – and make them a combo of symbols, numbers and uppercase and lowercase letters. Instead of passwords, think of them as passphrases. The beauty of it is that you don’t have to remember any of them. You can let your password manager do that job for you.

If you cannot decide for yourself, there’s a myriad of tools that can help you. For complex passwords, consider using an online password generator. LogMeOnce password manager has builtin password calculators that estimate the approximate time hackers and thieves need to crack the password.

2. Never Use the Same Password More than Once

We’re all guilty of it, especially when we don’t use password managers, but have dozens of passwords for dozens of different accounts. Instead of memorizing them all, we then decide to use the same one for multiple log-ins. Password duplication makes your information very vulnerable, so stop doing it.

3. Don’t Write Your Passwords Down

To keep password safe, regardless of how long, strong and complex it is, never write it down. Storing passwords in Excel is just as risky and dangerous. Password managers are simply the safest way to store passwords – with them, you need to memorize a single master password and with LogMeOnce you can go PasswordLess, and that’s pretty easy.

4. Put Your Trust in Password Managers

All the best ones are incredibly convenient and easy to use, not to mention that a password manager of any kind is a more reliable solution than keeping your passwords written on paper or saved in Excel. While some of them you can use for free, others require a fee that still won’t break your bank.

A handful of these trustworthy tools go beyond providing the best way to store passwords offline and online alike. LogMeOnce is the most feature-rich product on the market, as it offers an abundance of choices for device management, double-factor authentications, and even selfie log-ins.

5. Use LogMeOnce’s Mugshot

Still, one interesting feature deserves to be mentioned separately. Mugshot, is nothing less than a perfect little aid in cases of phone theft. As a thief tries to access the device, the app connects to both front and rear camera and snaps photos of the wrongdoer, sending them to your LogMeOnce online dashboard along with the IP address and the device’s GPS location. Handy, right?

6. Keep Your Phone Locked

This one should go without saying, but we’ll point it out just in case. As soon as you get a new device, be that a smartphone or a tablet, set up a hard-to-crack password and enable device lock (turn screen off) at all times. If this is for some reason inconvenient for you, adjust the phone’s settings to automatically lock the device after a period of inactivity.

7. If Your Phone Supports Touch ID, Enable It

Apple devices are no longer the only ones that offer a technologically advanced fingerprint security. Make sure to check whether or not your phone has it too, and to enable it if it does. There’s plenty of ways to save passwords securely, but when it comes to thefts, nothing beats touch ID.

8. Learn How to Track Your Phone in Advance

You can acquire a separate device tracker! Only LogMeOnce password manager includes this powerful feature.

9. Enable Device-Wiping

Device-wiping is closely connected to remote tracking, and some smartphone manufacturers offer them. LogMeOnce has it too, which can’t be said about any other password managers. It’s a simple but powerful feature, allowing you to erase data from the phone if it winds up in the wrong hands.

10. Acquire Wireless Proximity Alarm System

Taken together, all of the aforementioned features will be just enough to keep your passwords safe in the unfortunate case of theft. In an ideal scenario, however, the thief wouldn’t be able to steal your phone in the first place. If something can help you protect it, it’s the wireless proximity alarm system.

This alarm is both a gadget and an app, and is one way to keep your device, passwords, and data safe from stealing. The moment your phone gets even a step further than the pre-set distance limit from the alarm gadget – typically held on a key ring – the app will let you know.

Though there’s not a definite advice on how to keep track of passwords safely, nor a guaranteed answer to the question how to keep my passwords safe, these 10 things will certainly lower the risk. Be responsible enough to lock it all in, and cautious enough to make your passwords properly stored and neatly organized – that way, the chances of your phone getting stolen will be very, very thin.