Today’s article is another non-financial topic, but I consider it to be something that most people need to know about, but probably don’t.
As you may have guessed, it has to do with passwords.
If you use the Internet, chances are you have several passwords (and usernames) you need to remember.
Remembering all of those can become quite difficult, quite fast (if you’re wondering why you’d have more than one username - see my previous article for why this can be beneficial, particularly if your username is your email address).
One “solution” to the problem of remembering usernames and passwords is to use the same username and password for everything - your computer, entertainment, email, bank, social media, etc.
This is a bad idea - if someone guesses (or steals, or buys, or watches you type) your username/password they’d have access to all of your accounts - they wouldn’t even need to know all the places you used them - they could simply go to a popular service’s login page and try your credentials to see if they worked.
An alternative “solution” is to use a variation of the same password that you remember.
This is slightly better, but not much - most passwords that are easy to remember are also easy for a computer to “brute force” (find by means of trying all possible combinations of letters/numbers/special characters), or a skilled “hacker” to guess (particularly if they have other information about you that you may use in a password - birthdates, addresses, kids names, etc.).
The best solution (that I’ve found so far) is to not remember passwords at all.
This is accomplished by use of a password manager.
A password manager is an application that securely stores your username/password (and sometimes other data - like a website name, or url, etc.) making it possible to have a unique username/password for every website/account you have.
My password manager of choice is Bitwarden (and no, I’m not getting anything for recommending them).
Bitwarden has a great free plan, a great mobile app, a great desktop-browser extension, a great feature set and is generally considered secure.
One feature that makes Bitwarden my choice is the ability to share usernames/passwords with one other person (on their free plan - which is what I use).
This way I can share access to joint accounts securely - no need to send a password via text or phone call, or keep it set to something that I and whomever I’m sharing it with can remember.
Thanks to Bitwarden, I can say that I don’t know most of my passwords - they’re almost all very long, random combinations of letters, numbers and symbols.
I just remember my “master password” (that unlocks and decrypts my Bitwarden vault) and occasionally export and securely print (or save to a thumb drive stored in a secure location) all of my passwords in case of some catastrophic event destroying Bitwarden’s servers (and Bitwarden even offers an option to self-host if you’re technically adept enough to manage that and want to avoid your passwords being on someone else’s servers).
I additionally have two-factor authentication set up on my Bitwarden account, so even if someone did manage to steal my master password they still wouldn’t have access to my Bitwarden account unless they also managed to compromise the mechanism that generates my 2FA codes for me.
Thanks to Bitwarden, when I read about the latest “data breach” compromising hundreds of millions of usernames and passwords, I’m generally not too concerned.
Chances are, if my information is in the breach, it’s a unique username and a unique, long and complex password that I’m not using anywhere else.
So, what are you waiting for - go give Bitwarden a try already and sleep a little easier at night now that you don’t need to go through all your passwords in your head as you fall asleep so that you don’t forget them!
Have a better solution?
Shoot me an email, or let me know in the comments below.
(As always, please remember that the information presented in this article is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as financial, legal, medical, or any other type of professional advice. The content is based on my experiences, research, and opinions at the time of writing. Always consult with a qualified professional before making any decisions based on information you find on this site.)