Hi,

I recently experienced the total crash of my home PC. I had become careless with backups and subsequently lost all my data, all my passwords, bookmarks, login details, personal documents...everything.

I've since purchased a new PC and recovered 90% of my bookmarks and recreated most of my important personal documents. I'm also saving my important data daily, archiving them into zip files, copying to an external hard drive, finally uploading them to an online data storage service. I've become adamant about this daily routine and feel pretty confident that I can recover my personal data if I need to in the future.

Here's the big question: I have a bookmark utility that stores all my internet bookmarks, including username/password details for each. I export that data into an htm document and wonder if it is safe/secure to upload that document to my web site and make it be password accessible via an htaccess file. I'd like to have those bookmarks be accessible on my web site anywhere that I use a computer. I also use Furl and StartAid to save some of my bookmarks (the ones where I remember the passwords and don't need them stored).

Using the htaccess method, is that a secure and safe solution to storing my bookmarks...or is it just plain foolish and asking for trouble? My plan (next paycheck) is to purchase a portable USB memory drive and use that instead of the aforementioned
solution.

Stefan

Stefan,

I wouldn't put anything with passwords in a web accessible place. If your htaccess file, which controls the password protection, is somehow moved or modified then it could expose your file. If you're uploading it to your account, you can place thing within a folder of your home directory and these will not be publicly accessible.

If you use Firefox and have a Google account, there is a add-on called Google Sync which can keep a remote copy of your bookmarks and other settings for you and will also encrypt it.

Thanks, your advice is wise and smart. I'm just trying to find a way to access my bookmarks without putting them all into Firefox, then exporting those. I have so many bookmarks that I don't store them in my browser; I prefer the program I use, Bookmark Buddy (it also encrypts all the data).

If I stored the file in my home directory how would I access that file via a web browser; would I have to log into cPanel to access it? Ultimately, I think I'll have to spring for a USB memory device and use that for portablility.

thanks,
Stefan

I would recommend the USB device route. And you can use a program called AnyPass on the flash drive with no issues and it will keep the file encrypted with a master password to access in case you lose the drive.

Okay, I'll check it out. Also, what about KeePass; does anyone have experience using it? The developers claim that it also installs on a flash drive and provides encryption with a master password.

Thank you for advising me to go the safe route on this matter. I've changed my mind about uploading the bookmark file to my web site, even with password protection. That could have been a serious "doh!" on my part.

Stefan

Any password manager that encrypts, runs from a flash drive and has a master password is good in my opinion. I only mentioned AnyPass because that's the one I use. You can also put your bookmarks file on a flash drive however AnyPass stores bookmarked URL's that you can launch from the program.