So, if you’ve read the previous link, Creating a Good Password, you’ll have an idea about what makes a password strong, and how to be more secure.
If you’re like me, your immediate thought is about what to do with all of your accounts that use the same username and password to get in. After all, if one of those websites gets hacked and the passwords are leaked, every other website where you’ve used that same password could easily be at risk.
We have tools available to help us. A Password Manager, or Password Vault is software that endeavors to allow you to lock all your other passwords behind a master password. Services like this tend to be encrypted, meaning that if anyone else were to get their hands on the files, they wouldn’t be able to read any of it without your password.
<aside> 💡 Encryption: It’s good to note how encryption of files can really help with our security. Just know that a password for encryption is like a key to your house, except that if the password is lost, there isn’t a locksmith to get you into ‘that’ house. Make sure you have this kind of important password written down in a safe place. Maybe… literally a safe or vault. Alternatively, somewhere you’re familiar with, that someone you don’t trust isn’t likely to come across. Let us know if you’d like advice. 😃
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The easiest solution is likely going to be something like Bitwarden who hosts your information on their servers and encrypts your information with your master password. This is so that even Bitwarden staff can’t read your stuff.
The Bitwarden pricing is pretty great, considering they have a free option that works for most people, and charge less than $1 per month for some of the more special features like built in 2-factor authentication.
You can download and install their program on your computer, but I’ve always just installed their browser addon. If you’re using firefox, you can search “Bitwarden Firefox install”, and if you’re using Chrome, Brave, Vivaldi, or Opera, you can search “Bitwarden Chrome install” as these all use Chrome browser addons.
Once you have the addon installed, and you’ve registered for a new account, you can click on the little blue shield icon at the top right of your browser and sign in. After that, when you sign into a website, you’ll see a little pop-up message along the top asking you if you’d like Bitwarden to remember your sign-in details for you. Once your details are saved, in the future you just need to click on the blue shield icon and select the account for whatever website you’re on, such as Facebook.
<aside> 💡 Remember, if you change your password in an account like Facebook, Bitwarden will sometimes be able to detect that you’ve made that change (if you’re currently signed in), but if you’re unsure, you should make sure that password is updated in Bitwarden manually.
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One of the most significant benefits to using a password manager is that you can generate longer passwords for your accounts, and have Bitwarden keep track of them. Now all your passwords don’t have to look like RufusWhit3horse1972 and they can look more like this 25 character string, nFVcC549sums#g$R^t8ysrTkM”!
Passwords can also be completely unique on each account, which means if one website gets hacked, or sells your data, it doesn’t leave your other accounts automatically exposed.
I was going to work on some documentation specifically on how to use Bitwarden, but they actually have way better explanation than I’d write here: **https://bitwarden.com/help/**
Essentially though, once a username and account pairing is saved in a password manager the process is usually just signing into the manager, selecting the icon to open your manager, then the account details which will be inserted into the website.
