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.
KeePassXC is entirely local.
LastPass (ironically) explains this best: https://blog.lastpass.com/posts/2022/06/why-you-shouldnt-store-passwords-in-a-browser
Thanks but the LastPass article is partly inapplicable and partly marketing. The one good point it makes for non-corporate users is about leaving your browser open where attackers can access it, say at the office. For a while I tried using a FIDO2 token but they weren’t well enough supported at the time. Maybe that is easier now.
I guess the reasons I would make would be not all accounts are web-based, and using a browser for anything other than browsing is a bad idea. Browsers aren’t exactly focused on keeping passwords safe, so why not use a tool designed for it? Don’t keep all your eggs in one basket
P.S. Yes, FIDO2 is much more supported
I guess I use a few APIs with auth tokens that are like passwords but I don’t see how a password manager would help. Yeah the tech for this stuff could be better, but vendors keep messing it up.
What about your Lemmy account?
On my laptop I use the Firefox password store. On my phone I mostly use Voyager which presumably stores the password in a protected app file. It could probably be extracted by rooting the phone but that has gotten harder to do, and anyway it’s also in Firefox on the same phone. Voyager is basically an API client. I can see some interesting ways to improve this but haven’t cared enough.