Bergesch Computer Services, Inc.
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Any suggestions, recommendations or ideas found on this site are applied at your own risk.  This page contains our opinions based on years of cleaning up computers and assisting customers with various problems... 

Passwords

More and more these days, everything is online and with identity theft being a big issue, you need to use good password!  Hijacking of online accounts is fairly common, especially for those accounts having weak passwords such as common words, dates, nicknames, pet names and so on.   

We have seen too many email addresses lost because the user changed the password then forgot it.  Gmail, Yahoo and other web-based email security is quite high and unless you have setup some type of secondary contact information, recovering from hijacking or a lost password is nearly impossible.

Computers

If you forget your password, you may not get back in.  While the data may be recoverable, the computer would likely have to be restored to factory condition, but some caveats:

Other notes:

Web/Internet related

We're mostly lazy a heart (us included) having the computer remember our various website logins.

Used to be:

Recently, the same author (Paul Grassi) of the above recommendation is now saying a string of random words is fine, e.g., bearbrowngooseearth.

We're not so comfortable with that but either way - the longer the password the better!

Clearing saved information

While you can't view or edit Internet related login information (without hacking software), you can delete the information.

Microsoft's Internet Explorer
IEpwds

Google's Chrome
chrome

Mozilla's FireFox
firfox

Credential Manager (local passwords)

This is where local login information is stored, e.g., shared network connections, some applications such as our Expressions app and Windows Live (bottom item). 

Here you can remove or edit the credentials, but notice the blue boxed items too...

credential