Passwords

Howie149

The Smartlink system requires a password as does the flex radio community board, the retail area etc... Yet the password conventions don't seem consistent. On smartlink you can's use symbols but everwhere else you can. To make life easy, I'd make the system the same for all locations.

K7JV

If a person changes their password on the "community" does that change it on the basic flexradio.com website (the retail area)? Does it also change it on the SmartLink system?

Or are all three different???

Several days ago, while trying to get to where I could order a headset and view the "community" for information on what I wanted to order, I wound up locked out of everything from too many unsuccessful tries! Tonight I was able to get the "community" working again, but had to order my new headset as a "guest".

Frustrating! Are all three different? (Community / Retail / SmartLink)

K7JV

UPDATE - On the Mac, there is a program called "Keychain" that is a password manager. I opened it and reviewed the recent password changes and it answered at least some of my question. It turns out that when I changed the password for "community.flexradio.com" it also changed the passwords for "www.flexradio.com", "shop.flexradio.com" and "helpdesk.flexradio.com" to the same new password, ON MY COMPUTER.

However, when I tried to log onto Flex's retail website, like I described above, it did not work. Rats! Maybe that means that all four of those links use different passwords.

John K3MA

In this day and age it is a very good idea to use a password manager program. LastPass, 1Password, Keeper etc. That way you can use hard to break passwords, don't need to remember them and don't care if they are different. If you do not want to use a password manager then at least keep a notebook and write down all your passwords. Not what I would recommend but I have had many hams whom I have worked with remotely and when I ask them to enter a password they do not remember it and did not write it down.

It might seem counter intuitive but it is actually not a good security practice to have the same passwords for different uses. If you use the same password for your Flex account and other accounts if for some reason the system that Flex uses get hacked the hackers will most likely try to log into your email account, facebook account, bank account, 401K retirement accounts with the same password. I am sure there are people that have had regrets about not using different, hard to hack passwords when they start getting upset emails from people because a scammer has hacked their email and used it to send bulk messages or they find funds have been taken out of there bank account or a bunch of Amazon eGift cards have been purchased and charged to their Credit Card.

John K3MA

Mike-VA3MW

In the FlexRadio world, these are all different systems with unique usernames and passwords. It is done this way for security. Changing the credentials on one does not affect the other systems.

• SmartLink
• Sales/Ordering
• Community
• Helpdesk