Whether you are using a password or not, one way to make your password safer is by using a password manager. A password manager creates, stores, and remembers passwords for the user. Password managers can also help to deliver stronger and more complicated passwords assisting intelligent users in choosing better passwords—and there;s a lot more that we’ll dive into.
Password managers are services that let you store all your passwords online
The idea is to have one strong master password and use the vault to access all of your accounts.
The service will generate truly random passwords for you and synchronize them across all devices where you store them in an encrypted form. It also generally has some form of two-factor authentication (2FA), so no one can hack into your account without both knowledge of the master password and access to one of your devices or emails where 2FA is enabled—and even then, there’s still a chance someone could guess both correctly.
While selecting one, pay good attention to the security features offered by the password manager service. Some of the best antivirus software companies also offer password managers as a part of their packages.
A password vault stores user credentials in an encrypted format as opposed to sending them over unsecured networks like HTTP or FTP, as we do today with traditional web applications.
There are many different kinds of password manager service, but most of them work the same way. Rather than having to memorize every one of your passwords (and lose track of them), you can save all your login info in one secure place. When it’s time to log in somewhere, you only have to remember one master password that unlocks all your other account information.
You give the password manager service one master password and it saves your other passwords
The master password is like a vault or safe in which you store your passwords. That way, when you need to log into one of your accounts, you can open the vault and use the right key (your master password) to get inside.
You can then add or delete passwords as needed. When you want to login to an account, all you have to do is go back to the vault and look up the correct key—your master password. The service never knows what your master password is; they only know how many times they’ve tried using it unsuccessfully before giving up and telling you that “the password was incorrect.”
One of the most popular features is that you can use an app to automatically log in to websites
This is called auto-fill or autofill, and it means that when you visit a website, your password manager will enter your username and password for you. This saves you from having to remember all your passwords—and it also saves you from having to reset them if they’re lost or stolen.
Auto-fill works on mobile devices and computers, as well as in apps (like Chrome). It’s even more convenient than typing out your entire password every time, because once auto-fill remembers a website’s login information, it will fill out all the fields for that site in one click so that there are no dropdowns asking whether “username” or “email” is correct!
Good password managers also allow you to share passwords with other people or groups
Many password managers let you share passwords with other people or groups. This is great if you have a spouse, partner, or family member who needs access to certain accounts. You can easily let them see the login information, and they can add it to their own password manager so that no one else has access to it.
If you want to share an account but not give them full access to the user name and password (for example, if they need only limited access), then this feature is also handy for specifying which parts of an account should be shared. For example, you might want your partner to see only one-time login details without giving him or her permission to change any settings in your online banking app.
It’s hard to come up with a good password for each account and remember each one as you go along
You may have heard the phrase, “The human mind is like a parachute: it only works when it’s open.” This can be true for passwords too. In fact, experts say that even if you have a password manager and are using a strong master password, you should still write down your most important passwords somewhere safe in case your computer crashes or something else happens.
While using a password manager to store all these passwords may seem like an unnecessary step toward online security, anyone who’s ever tried to come up with an original yet secure combination of characters for every single login knows how difficult it can be without one—especially if you have too many accounts to remember them all by heart!
