The password is our first line of defense in securing our online accounts and “password123” is not good enough. Our passwords should be complex with uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols. These long and complex passwords are secure but are difficult to remember.
According to a study back in 2020, the average person has 70-80 passwords. This will continue to increase as we continue to adopt a more digital lifestyle. Remembering this many passwords is not easy so most people tend to make simple passwords or create and remember one complex password use them repeatedly in multiple accounts. Both are a recipe for disaster that can have very damaging consequences, financially or socially in the form of identity theft or accounts takeovers.
Passwords manager apps can help us secure our online accounts generating long and complex passwords and remembers it for you. It also automatically fills your username and password for you on a site you have saved in the passwords manager’s vault. It can also fill your personal information like your name, address, and credit card number. Some password managers also alert you if your existing password is weak, reused of have appeared in a data breach.
There are a lot of password managers out there. Using any of them is better than none but not all password managers are made the same. Apple and Google have their own password managers, but they lack the features of dedicated password managers.
I personally use Bitwarden as my Password Manager. They are open-sourced, have browser, mobile and desktop apps, stores my notes, credit cards and it’s just amazingly easy to use. They also have an affordable premium subscription at $10 USD a year. This gives access to TOTP, 1 GB Encrypted file attachment, priority support and it allows me to use my YubiKeys.
A password manager is one of the critical tools everyone should be using in the digital age. There are a lot of password managers out there to choose from. I am sure you will find something you’ll like and make you stop just remembering your passwords.