Every six months (usually when the clocks change), I update all of my most important passwords. This is also an excellent practice to take on at the beginning of the year. If you haven’t changed your passwords in awhile, you may wish to consider doing so, especially considering all the recent website hacks in the news lately. Many folks claim that the more often you change your passwords – as well as using longer, more difficult-to-guess passwords – the less likely your data will be compromised. It is also suggested that you never use the same password at more than one site. That way, if a website or service is hacked, the hackers will not have free access to all of your other accounts as well.

My go-to password management application is 1Password put out by the folks at AgileBits. One feature that can make managing your passwords easy and relatively painless is the application’s Smart Folder feature.

Using a Smart Folder, you can choose to display any accounts for which you haven’t changed the password in a specified period of time. For instance, I display any sites whose password I have not changed in 180 days or more and then can subsequently, update the password on those accounts.

Another maintenance task that I routinely perform in 1Password is to look for any accounts that I haven’t visited in a year or more. I often have several such accounts because I tend to try out new services to see what they’re all about. As such, I end up with many accounts in 1Password that I have visited once or twice and have no plans to return to them in the future. In this case, I might delete or deactivate the account and then delete the entry from 1Password (but I typically wait a couple of weeks to ensure that the account deactivation actually took place).

1Password also contains built-in password audit features. Click Security Audit in the left pane and then choose to display all accounts with weak passwords, duplicate passwords as well as those accounts whose password age is 3+ years, 1-3 years or 6-12 months old. The Watchtower feature displays any websites that may have been vulnerable in the past, suggesting that you may wish you change your password on those sites.

1Password is available for the Mac, for the iPhone and for the iPad.

LastPass, another popular password management application, also includes audit features that help you to keep your passwords up-to-date.

Quick Guide: Create a Smart Folder to display password change dates older than 6 months

1. Launch the 1Password application.
2. Select File > New Smart Folder from the menu.
3. Click the Search drop-down list and choose Logins.
4. Click the first drop-down list in the third row and choose Last Password Change from the list.
   
5. Click the center drop-down list and choose Is Greater Than (or choose whatever operator you want to use).
6. Click in the text box and type in 180 (or enter in whatever value you want to use). All accounts meeting that criteria will be displayed.
   

Quick Guide: Create a Smart Folder to display sites not visited in the past year

1. Launch the 1Password application.
2. Select File > New Smart Folder from the menu.
3. Click the Search drop-down list and choose Logins.
4. Click the first drop-down list in the third row and choose Last Used from the list.
5. Click the center drop-down list and choose Is Greater Than or Equal To from the list.
6. Click in the text box and type 365 (or enter in whatever number of days you want to use). All accounts meeting that criteria will be displayed.

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