From The Tips Box: Password Recovery, Window Switching


Readers offer their best tips for keeping your passwords secure and switching between open windows.

Every day we receive boatloads of great reader tips. From the Tips Box is where we round up some of our favourites. Got a tip of your own to share? Add it in the comments or send it using the contact tab on the right.

Use Aliases For Password Recovery

Ncw96 shares another way to keep your passwords secure on top of our recent suggestion to have an email address dedicated solely for password recovery:

I saw this article on password security that you just posted and had a similar idea:

You should use an email service with alias support for your password recovery information. These aliases cannot be used as a login address for your email account, so the hacker would not have the necessary info to access your email. This gives you an extra layer of security for your resets.

This method definitely works with Outlook.com accounts and iCloud accounts.

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Cycle Through Open Windows With AutoHotkey

Moon shares an awesome AutoHotkey script:

With Autohotkey’s GroupAdd function, you can peruse opened files of a certain type, alt+tab style, without having to cycle through other kinds of files or programs that may also be running.

Here’s a script example of what can be done:

GroupAdd, texts, ahk_class Notepad

return

^Numpad1::GroupActivate, texts, r

^Numpad2::

GroupClose, texts , A

return

In the above example, the Ctrl key plus the number 1 on the number pad will run you through all the text files you have open, assuming that Notepad is what you use for editing. If you use something else, such as MetaPad (my fave), then every instance of “Notepad” can be replaced with “metapad”. Ultimately the name you use will be determined by the AutoIt3 Windows Info Spy tool that comes with Autohotkey.

Any instances of Notepad that you open, whether they’re new blank files or ones already in existence, will fall under the group name of “texts”. In that way, each instance is added to your cycle-through list automatically. If you have browsers running, a music player, a graphics editor etc, they won’t be part of the shuffle, because they’re not in the group named texts , and thus won’t show up to distract — so long as you use Ctrl+Numpad1 instead of the normal Alt+Tab.

The last three lines are just something I added for convenience. They close the whole group, using Ctrl+Numpad 2.

GroupAdd can do a lot more than this, too. See this link for more information.

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Use Android’s Notification Drawer To Hide Phone Numbers In Screenshots

Dennizvu discovers an easy way to hide personal information:

My Android phone’s messaging app shows the phone number in addition to the contact name above the conversation. When I need to screenshot the conversation, I pull down on the notification shade just enough to cover the phone number, and using my other hand, take a screenshot. No need to cut or block out using editing software, and requires very little work.

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