Tuesday, December 30, 2008

MS Office Passwords and Password Recovery Programs

By Albert McZeally

If you have a computer and are connected to the Internet then your computer is at risk of having files stolen. While most of the files you have may be innocuous, if there is any personal information in them such as birthdays, social insurance numbers or financial data then you will want to make sure this information is protect from prying eyes. The easiest way to do this is to password protect your documents.

By placing a password on your important files you are ensuring that your documents are safe from those who would seek to exploit it, such as identity thieves. If you own a company you will want to do the same for your financial information as well as and documents that contain info about your clients. While you may not think it is important now, if the data should ever get stolen you will be thankful for it.

The important thing is that no matter what password you choose for your files, you need to keep track of it. Nothing is more aggravating than trying to get into an important file and realizing that you forgot the password. Although writing down your passwords seem like a bad idea, if you are prone to forgetfulness it may be necessary. Above all you want to make sure that your passwords never fall into the wrong hands.

No matter how careful you are though, it is likely that at some point you will forget or lose a password for a file. Fortunately there are programs available to help you get back into your files. Password recovery tools in the form of a software program can systematically attempt to access the file using a wide variety of methods.

Password recover software use several different methods in order to guess the right password for a file. One of these methods is to go through the dictionary and try every word in it. If you know that you always use a number or symbol in the password you can optimize the search to include them.

Next the software will try different combinations of letters, numbers and symbols to get into the file. If your password was short and simple then it should have no problem getting in, but if you use long, complicated passwords the software will need some time, and there is no guarantee that it will be able to find the right combination.

If your password is very complex there is a chance that the software will not be able crack your password. In this case you will need to take the last resort option and have the software disable your password protection entirely. While this is not the best option as it will leave your files vulnerable while you re-protect them, if you cant get into your files by other means and your files are important to you then it has to be done.

Password recover software can be used on many different types of files and even Windows itself, should you forget how to access your computer. Remember that you should only be using password recovery software to access your own files, as using it to open someone elses documents is illegal.

The next time you are password protecting your documents, consider opening a secure document and saving your passwords in there, then make sure that the password you place on that document is 1) easy to remember and 2) complicated enough that a software recovery program couldn't open it. Then you wont have to worry about lost passwords or unprotected files. - 15634

About the Author: