It is truly upsetting to see how few people use password managers. I have witnessed people who always use the same password (and even tell me what it is), people who try to login to accounts but constantly can’t remember which credentials they used, people who store all of their passwords on a text file on their desktop, people who use a password manager but store the master password on Discord, entire tech sectors in companies locked to LastPass, and so much more. One person even told me they were upset that websites wouldn’t tell you password requirements after you create your account, and so they screenshot the requirements every time so they could remember which characters to add to their reused password.
Use a password manager. Whatever solution you think you can come up with is most likely not secure. Computers store a lot of temporary files in places you might not even know how to check, so don’t just stick it in a text file. Use a properly made password manager, such as Bitwarden or KeePassXC. They’re not going to steal your passwords. Store your master password in a safe place or use a passphrase that you can remember. Even using your browser’s password storage is better than nothing. Don’t reuse passwords, use long randomly generated ones.
It’s free, it’s convenient, it takes a few minutes to set up, and its a massive boost in security. No needing to remember passwords. No needing to come up with new passwords. No manually typing passwords. I know I’m preaching to the choir, but if even one of you decides to use a password manager after this then it’s an easy win.
Please, don’t wait. If you aren’t using a password manager right now, take a few minutes. You’ll thank yourself later.
I have a password manager with a family plan so my wife can use it. Does she? Absolutely not. And that’s why we don’t share bank accounts.
Same and she has the balls to ask me for passwords!
Same here. Kinda feels good to know I am not alone with this, though.
I blame the tinfoil hat infosec crowd for not understanding that the world they inhabit is not the same one Regular Users live in.
Is there risk in keeping all your passwords in one place, whether it’s on your hardware or someone else’s? hell yes! Is that risk stastically speaking ANYTHING LIKE the risk you take when you use ‘pencil’ for all your passwords because you can’t be arsed to memorize anything more complex? OH HELL YES.
Sure, if you’re defending against nation state level agressors, maybe using a password manager isn’ the wisest choice, but for easily 99% of computer users, we’re at the level of “keeping people from drooling on their shoes”. So password managers are probably a GREAT idea.
I feel like password managers are more targeted to companies where sharing and controlling login data shouldnt be logged on some table in an excel sheet.
It just so happens that a manager is also god damn convenient for the private individualI don’t think that’s always the case. 1Password started out as a personal password manager and only added the corporate/teams/families features later.
So password managers are probably a GREAT idea.
That is, when they can manage to use it.
My dad somehow believes that that password managers are very insecure ( he got that from some sort of ‘reputable source’, so me telling him bitwarden is secure doesn’t help) and he just writes down all of his completely randomly generated passwords in a notebook, which always seems really inefficient to me, especially when he writes a character down incorrectly.
I mean he’s not wrong about paper being more secure than password manager (provided you have good physical security and trust the people you live with)
Yes, but this is like replacing the front door of your house with a bank vault door. Yes, it’s more secure, but there is a point of “reasonably secure enough” for most people and at some point, you are just inconveniencing yourself for no tangible gain.
Well yeah I guess that’s true
My wife does this with index cards. I have to try to figure out what she wrote down (1? l?) and she crosses out an old one and writes the new one in a random spot so I have to study the card to find the live pw.
Is your dad Ron Swanson? /j
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My sell on password managers is quality of life. You never have to reset your passwords and you can use a hotkey to enter it faster than typing. Gone are the days of fat fingers.
But I get where people have an issue. It’s one point of failure vs. many, but they don’t realize It’s easier to well secure the one than it is to not spread the same vulnerability everywhere.
Honestly as someone who has helped family members set up a password manager one person felt this way and the rest are just not tech savvy. All the simple straightforward stuff took ages because they had never done it before.
One person even told me they were upset that websites wouldn’t tell you password requirements after you create your account,
To be fair, that is super fucking annoying. I hate when I tell bitwarden to save my password only to have the site come back with it being too long and only some special characters are allowed.
My favorite is the sites that silently truncate your password to a maximum length only they know, before storing it. Then when you come back you have to guess which substring of your password they actually used before you can log in. Resetting doesn’t help unless you realize they’re doing this and use a short one.
My favorite was the password set screen allowing up to 64 characters, but login fails if the password is over 32 chars.
My webhost allows passwords of all length and complexities in the password set field, but will strip $ and & on the login mask on their main website, like in the top right corner.
A failed login will automatically bring you to a dedicated login.xxx.yyy subdomain and prompt a password reset, but if you use the login mask there instead, the exact same password works.
Login and password set/reset forms being out of sync is a classic. 😆
I haven’t seen that one in a while luckily.
I like the password in my thinkpad’s bios that’s case sensitive when entering it to log in, but setting the password it’s not. That took me a while to figure out.
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Reddit used to silently truncate passwords. I can’t log in to my original account because they “fixed” the issue at some point
Omfg, one of my banks did this to me and was infuriating. I was able to call in to fix it and made a bug report, but goddamn, what idiot silently truncates the sign up password but not also the login form?!?
Clarification: They reuse the same password (such as “Password”) and whenever they create an account they have to add special characters (like “Password1&” if numbers and #@&%$ were required) and when they login they forget which special characters were required by that service, meaning they don’t know which special characters to append to their generic password to successfully login. The solution was to screenshot every password requirement for every service and still try to remember which characters were used.
But yes, there is an unrelated frustration where password requirements aren’t presented upfront.
But yes, there is an unrelated frustration where password requirements aren’t presented upfront.
And pinnacle of this frustration is “password too long”… Talk about security
which doesn’t make sense as a requirement, as the passwords themselves are not even (supposed to be) stored
limits of 128+ characters? Sure.
Limits of 30, 20, 18, or 16 as I’ve seen in many places? I suddenly don’t trust your website.
Do you want to know the kicker? There are banks (yes, you heard me right) that straight up don’t allow more than 20 chars. 20!!! And they say you got to use the app for X things because it’s secure and shit (e.g.: use the app to 2FA credit card transactions). Meanwhile, does not allow you to add a yubikey for Fido authentication
Steam and Spotify are notorious for this.
You are right. However most of the mainstream YouTubers promote rubbish password managers, which is why most people I know don’t know about bitwarden. I usually recommend bitwarden or proton pass. (I’m self-hosting vaultwarden). More privacy focus YouTubers need to promote bitwarden, keepassxc etc. (I’m waiting for proton pass self-hosting option).
whats missing, since the proton pass source code is available?
I have only found the source code for the Android and iOS application, but not for the server.
I was in the US Air Force for 20 years, working as an IT guy, and our computers were so locked down, you couldn’t use password managers at work. Nor were you allowed to bring them in.
Almost every office I worked in was secured; no removable electronic devices allowed. No cell phones, no flash drives or removable drives. Heck, CDs were a controlled item. You had to check with a security manager for approval before bringing in a music CD, and and data CDs required a log of their use and physical control by a trusted agent.
Plus, the computers themselves had a custom-configured OS and you couldn’t install any software on them that wasn’t on a pre-approved list. Half the time, normal users needed to talk to an admin like me to install something, and I might not even have the rights at my level to do it.
I didn’t get to mess around with password managers until I retired a couple years ago, and they’ve been a game changer! In the military, we needed unique complex passwords for everything, can’t reuse passwords, can’t write down passwords, and you had to change them every 60 days.
Having a password manager makes my personal accounts so much more secure. I can have super complex passwords for everything and not need to remember them. I currently have Proton Pass (been de-Googling my life and switching all my stuff over to Proton lately) and it’s been wonderful.
I don’t know why the military doesn’t get some sort of password manager approved for use. This is far more secure than what they’ve been doing in the past. I had 3 standard password templates, then made minor changes to them for every unique account. If they got too complex, I’d forget them (and again, we weren’t allowed to write them down). Now I can just auto-generate a 25+ character complex password and I don’t even need to remember it. I love it!
This is crazy to read, thanks for sharing! How did you store/remember all the passwords?
Been using Bitwarden for a couple years now…
No regrets
I’ve been using Proton Pass and it has been a game changer for me. Hot take: I think Proton Pass is Proton’s best service.
It creates not only a unique password for each service but also a unique email address alias. If a website leaks my email address and I get spam, I know exactly who did it and I only need to swap 1 login credential.
Has a built-in 2FA and passkeys. Works great in the browser with proper auto complete, even for the 2FA code. Works fine on Android and password in both browser and applications get autocomplete.
Proton Pass can be used by everyone, regardless of their technical level, in every device. My mom could easily use this across all her devices. I’m told Keepass is fantastic but having it sync across all her devices would be challenging for her.
Most Proton services feel kinda underbaked but Proton Pass is excellent.
I’m a little miffed that 2FA support is a paid feature.
I’m using KeePassXC and have no intention of switching, plus I’m paying for an account anyway, I just feel that 2FA is such an essential feature for a password manager that it shouldn’t be locked behind a paywall.100% agree. Charging for the unlimited email alias is fine but 2FA? :/
I actually came here to echo this exact sentiment. I was on Lastpass until their first breach and then on Bitwarden both cloud and self-hosted until a few months ago when I set up with Proton. I liked Bitwarden so I put off trying ProtonPass. One weekend I set it up and ended up putting my 2FA items in as well. It feels absolutely seamless to use. The email aliasing for websites is so easy for making new website accounts. In my desktop and laptop browser the way it automatically offers to autofill the 2FA is so clean. I can’t see myself going back unless Proton gets prohibitively more expensive or the product declines in usability/security. If you are currently using Proton’s suite of apps give Protonpass a try. You can easily import from Last pass/Bitwarden and use both to compare side by side.
If that wasn’t a scripted ad, you should go into sales.
I have worked in retail to help pay for university. It was a miserable job. Dealing with people made me a worse person.
I am very “passionate” about Proton Pass but don’t take me for a Proton chill, I have a lot of criticism about their other products.
I tell non techy people to use a physical book that they can secure. People know how to do hide things or put them in a safe. Digital security is harder to understand and I would say a book in a safe place is way better than reusing passwords they find hard to remember.
I do that too.
- Its not like people are gonna steal book
- the password crackin people are not the breakin people
Whatever solution you think you can come up with is most likely not secure.
Having my passwords written down on a piece of paper is not safe ?
Maybe it’s secure but not safe. You won’t know if you have mistaken a character until it’s too late, or when you have written it ambiguously but you still remember it and don’t notice.
No. Anyone near you or with access to your place can see it. And most people know of the tricks.
Also you can’t encrypt it and most of all you can’t really generate as strong passwords as those generated by password managers, meaning I don’t even need the paper to try and crack your password
I don’t recommend Bitwarden. I used them in a corporate environment and they lost all of our company’s credentials. It was a huge hit that cost tens of thousands worth of man-hours to overcome. Their response was to shrug and say sorry. We were paying a premium for their services, too, and have moved onto LastPass.
Why weren’t any backups created?
Idk, not my department.
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Agreed, but it wasn’t my decision and TBF they didn’t lose our passwords.
I migrated from Bitwarden to Proton Pass (mostly due to their OTP integrations) and I am enjoying it very much. They are constantly improving it, which is also a plus.
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Changing passwords is almost always completely useless, and requiring it dramatically weakens security.
What’s the logic behind this statement? I would’ve thought that if a website’s logins and passwords were somehow leaked, the more often I change my password, the less likely it is for the leaked password to still be usable by bad guys based on the shorter time horizon.
Leaked how? No good practice allows any way for a password to “leak”.
What rotating passwords does is ensure people who don’t use a password manager either write their password down more and more frequently, or use a weaker password with some simple changing pattern that doesn’t add anything.
Leaked how? No good practice allows any way for a password to “leak”.
Suppose a social media website has a data breach.
What rotating passwords does is ensure people who don’t use a password manager either write their password down more and more frequently, or use a weaker password with some simple changing pattern that doesn’t add anything.
Okay, but suppose I use a password manager like Keepass, then does rotating my passwords not make me any safer in the event a social media website’s data is breached and ends up being sold off on the dark web?
I’m not in IT but I followed the Michael Bazzell podcast until he disappeared. Guy was a bit paranoid but there was great info there. My understanding was browser saving passwords isn’t secure, that those passwords are open to scraping from bad players. Ofc I can’t reference this because the entire body of over 300 podcasts disappeared with him.
Agree on Bitwarden and such.
