accounts and passwords: be careful :)
*whew* that was close. i almost lost all of my PH "alt" accounts... all because i was off by 1 letter on my passwords.
anyway, here's some general info; should be useful to everyone, but may be more useful to those with multiple accounts. some of this may sound obvious, but hopefully not *too* obvious. - when choosing a password, make sure that it's both easy for you to remember but difficult to guess. for sites that allow it, i always use a mix of uppercase, lowercase, numbers, and symbols (PH and PHF both allow these). don't use (dictionary) words and substitute numbers for letters (like 0 for o, 1 for i, etc. - P1x1eH0ll0w would be a really bad password - almost as bad as Passw0rd); that's an old 20th century trick, and really easy for a hacker to guess. instead, i think of a phrase or a bunch of words, and use one letter of each (not saying *which* letter ).
- some say not to record it anywhere, but if your password is *really* strong and you don't use it for awhile, it might be hard to remember otherwise. if you're going to record it, record it somewhere safe. don't write it down on a sticky note and put it on the bottom of your keyboard or mousepad (or anywhere else easy/obvious to look). i don't know if there's anything similar available for Windows, but on my Mac i'm using Keychain Access. i created a keychain called "games", and store my game logins there. the keychain files are encrypted... so there.
- make sure you know what e-mail address(es) you have set up on your account(s). you might want to keep a list of what you use each e-mail address for. i recently changed one of mine for an alt account, but forgot i was using it for that, and when i couldn't remember the password and tried to get the reset link, i didn't get it because i had already deleted the e-mail account! fortunately, i finally figured out the mistake in my password and fixed it.
- when changing a password... test, test, test! in my case, i had sort of taken the "easy route", and having picked a new password and stored it in Keychain Access, i just copied it from there and pasted it into the new password fields on the web page form. this shouldn't sound like a problem, but the silly thing is... what i originally typed was 1 letter off from the password i actually wanted. oops? so you might want to change it on a site, record it somewhere safe, and then log out/in on the site and check that it works... while looking at what you recorded.
- if you have multiple game accounts, and multiple e-mail accounts to go with them, it might help if they're related somehow. in my case, they are/were... except for the one, which is why i'd forgotten what i was using it for.
- if you have multiple e-mail accounts (not just "aliases"; if you have them, you'll know what i mean),... i don't know about anyone else, but i don't like having to check a "pile" of e-mail accounts. instead, i use two as "mailboxes", and forward the others to one of those two. in my case, i have an iCloud account (my Apple ID for iTunes, etc.) that i use as a mailbox for "personal" things (family, friends, etc.), and a Gmail account as a mailbox for everything else (gaming, mailing lists, etc.).
- last but not least, i prefer a "separation of church and state" when it comes to accounts and passwords. i don't use the same password for everything; with a single password for everything, if someone hacks one account,... "game over". while i won't "give away the home world" with how my stuff is set up, i *will* say that my personal, financial, game, etc. passwords are all different - and unrelated.
hmmm... that's a bit longer than i expected, but i hope it helps.
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fly with you later!
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