(If this thought of risking all your passwords at once makes you want to stop reading and give up on password managers now, don’t! In the section that follows, I’ll explain how password managers can be helpful even if you don’t entrust them with all your passwords.) The old proverb about keeping all your eggs in one basket applies to password managers yes, you can focus on guarding that one basket, but it just takes one mistake to lose all your eggs. Password managers can also put passwords at risk Password managers track which services you have accounts with, helping you identify unused accounts that you may want to close or delete data from to reduce your online exposure. If your password manager knows your unique random password for that site, but you don’t, it’s much harder to be tricked into entering it. Password managers protect you from these attacks because they will not enter your password if you’re at the attacker’s website. Attackers often craft emails to appear as if they’re coming from the website they want to impersonate, but provide a link to the attacker’s website. Impostor websites are designed to look like a website on which you have an account, in order to trick you into entering your password for that account. Password managers can prevent impostor websites from “phishing” you.
The replacement step is important because if you leave all your old passwords in place, and just let the password manager enter them for you, the password manager can’ stop this attack. Password managers makes it possible and easy to use a different random password for every account - at least once you’ve replaced all your old re-used passwords.
The attacks work because many people re-use the same password on multiple websites. Password managers can prevent password-reuse attacks, in which attackers break into a website, steal users’ email addresses and passwords from it, and try to login to other sites using the email/password pairs they stole. Password managers protect you by creating a strong, unique password for every service you use, and removing your need to enter those passwords.
Password managers help protect your passwords Some will even identify passwords you’ve re-used between sites and help you replace them. The better ones will create randomly-generated passwords for you, ensuring that you’re not using easily-guessed passwords or re-using passwords between sites. In addition to remembering your passwords, most password managers will type your password into login forms. There’s a password manager built into every major web browser today, and many stand-alone password managers that work across browsers. There are a lot of password managers to choose from. I’ll close with a handy list of the most important decisions you’ll need to make when using a password manager. I’ll then present a low-risk approach to experimenting with using a password manager, which will help you understand the tough choices you’ll need to make before using it for your most-important passwords. It’s hard to overstate the importance of protecting the data in your password manager, and having a recovery strategy for that data, so I’ll cover that next. In this article, I’ll start by examining the benefits and risks of using a password manager. They also make it easier to lose all your passwords at once, or for attackers to steal all your passwords in one instant. They make it easier to use strong passwords: those that are sufficiently random, long, and different for every one of your accounts. In case you haven’t received this advice, or didn’t understand what it was, Password managers are programs that remember passwords for you, along with the email address or other user identifier you use for each account. Each person uses technology differently, has a unique set of skills, and faces different risks. I cringe when I hear self-proclaimed experts implore everyone to “use a password manager for all your passwords” and “turn on two-factor authentication for every site that offers it.” As most of us who perform user research in security quickly learn, advice that may protect one individual may harm another.
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