In my mind's ear I hear Lawrence Ferlinghetti drawling his poem, Dog: "... a real realist, with a real tale to tell, and a real tail to tell it with."

Ferlinghetti's images were evoked by a press release I received touting MyPassword.net, a web site that offers to store all your web usernames and passwords for you, for free. Why would anyone want to send his password list to complete strangers? There must be a tale behind it, if not a tail.

Though a little Internet searching unveiled the name, address and phone number of the site's owner/operator, the site itself discloses no information. Nothing wrong with that in itself. Some of my own web sites provide no contact information at all. But I'm not asking anyone to send me anything.

These guys may well be, like many Internet startups, operating on a shoestring from their basement on their way to fame and fortune, with a service that will be in great demand. Or maybe they just want to collect a lot of passwords for.... reasons of their own. If it's legitimate, I don't think it's well thought out.

This reverie started me musing about Windows passwords. Windows 9x, of course, provides no password security at all, Microsoft having opted for convenience instead. You may have convenience or security, but rarely both. That's OK for most home or small business users, as long as they are aware of it. I've been surprised to find, though, that many people think that because Windows asks for a password at startup, that only those who know the password can use that system.

To bypass the Windows logon password one need only hit the escape key. It's a good idea to have a logon password, though not for security reasons. Without one, Windows tends not to save other passwords you do need, such as your Internet dialup password.

If you forget your logon password you don't need high-tech skills to fix things. Windows stores its passwords in files with the .pwl extension. Click Start, Find, Files or Folders, and in the "Named" box type *.pwl, and hit Enter. (If someone removed the Find entry from your Start menu click a blank spot on the desktop, hit the F3 key and remove the word Desktop from the "Look in" box.)

One of the files found should be in the Windows directory, and will be in the format of "yourname.pwl." Rename it something like yourname.old. You could delete it, but I prefer to save things until I'm sure everything works. Shut down, reboot and enter your name and a new password.

A variety of inexpensive ($5 - $10) password and other security tools are available from http://posum.com. If you really want to store all your passwords, there's a list of password managers here. I've not tried any, but a highly praised one is Password Keeper ($20).

If you want to handle web site registration usernames/passwords easily and securely, I recommend Lucent's service, LPWA (NNN, Feb. 27). That's assuming you trust Lucent/Bell Labs. At least we know who they are.

But when, like Ferlinghetti's and Victor Records' dog, you look "into the great gramophone of puzzling existence" that is the Internet, don't blindly bark your passwords into some strange maw.

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