Password Managers

In the modern digital world a single person can have dozens and even hundreds of passwords. Passwords are a core part of the internet and if you have any sort of account on a website or service you will need a password to access it. Passwords keep your accounts secure from unauthorized access and on paper are a good solution. In practice is a different story.

Why should you use a password manager?

In a world full of passwords, having one place to store and manage them all can make life a little easier. With a password manager you only need to remember your master password to access the others. While that sounds easy, the master password is one of the biggest cons about password managers. They can fall into the same trap if someone gets a hold of your master password or you forget it. But that being said, I do think they are still worth it.

The main reasons I think they are worth it is, ease of use, better than the alternatives, and they allow better security habits.

Ease of use

Most password managers I’ve used have been easy to get to know. Most are as simple as adding the desired information and clicking save. Many offer the ability to save login information, credit/debit cards, notes, and even your personal identity information. Most choices also have support for multiple operating systems and mobile apps which makes accessing them even easier.

That’s really all there is to most of them. There are some like KeePass that lean toward the more technical users but they are still relatively easy to navigate.

Better than the alternatives

The alternative methods for keeping track of passwords are in my opinion worse than using a password manager. In my experience there are a staggering amount of people who simply create a text file on their desktop, call it passwords.txt and then save all their information in there. Yes this is easy and convenient, but this file can be opened by anyone and says exactly what it is. I’ve worked in the professional IT world for over 7 years and the amount of users I’ve seen using this method is scary.

Another alternate method I see a lot with the folks from older generations is they have a notebook or sometimes just a piece of paper and they write down all their passwords. This method does have some merit but is archaic. People I’ve worked with have lost their holy grail and have panicked for days until they find it. They have scratched off or written over entries because they had to change a password, but the biggest one is they never seem to have their notebook when they need it. To me this is on the same level of putting your password on a sticky note attached to your monitor.

Better security habits

Utilizing password managers can help establish safer online habits that in the long run will benefit you. One of the best things you can do when it comes to passwords is make them long, random, and complicated. The more complex the better. Include upper and lower case, symbols, and numbers. My rule of thumb generally is to make passwords at least 20 characters, if the service allows it. Some services have strange complexity requirements where your password has to be a minimum length but can’t be more than a certain amount of characters either so watch for that.

Password managers are, in my opinion, one of the easiest ways to allow this. You can make passwords very complex and store them in your manager. You don’t have to remember what they are so you don’t inherently make a password that’s short and simple. The right way to think about it is its best that you don’t even know what they are.

What manager should you use?

I’ve used many different methods to store my passwords. I’ve used LastPass, Google Chrome’s built in password function, and event the dreaded passwords.txt.

The password manager that I recommend is Bitwarden

Bitwarden is open source, and has the best features in its free version. The premium plan does unlock even more features and is relatively inexpensive($10/year) but the free tier is plenty. The biggest pros are with Bitwarden you can store and unlimited amount of passwords and sync across devices in the free version. In other password managers those are a paid feature.

Bitwarden has Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, and Android apps to you can access your passwords through multiple devices anywhere you may be. They also offer browser extensions to access your vault directly in a web browser. and of course you can access directly on the web.

Thanks for reading - M.