Password Managers

If you've ever stared at a login screen trying to remember whether your password ended in "!" or "1" or your dog's name, you're not alone. The average person now has somewhere around a hundred online accounts, and nobody can realistically remember a hundred unique, strong passwords. So, we cheat: we reuse the same one everywhere, we write them in a notebook by the computer, or we let the browser save them and hope for the best. The trouble is, when one website gets hacked (and they do, constantly), criminals take that password and try it on your email, your bank, and your Amazon account. If you've reused it, they're in.

A password manager solves this by doing the remembering for you. You create one very strong master password, the only one you ever have to memorize, and the manager generates long, random, unguessable passwords for every other site you use. It fills them in automatically when you log in, so you never have to type them. Everything sits in an encrypted vault, meaning even the company running the service can't read your passwords without your master key. It feels strange at first to put all your eggs in one basket, but that basket is locked in a vault inside a bank, while the old way scatters eggs all over the sidewalk. Popular options like 1Password, Bitwarden, and Dashlane are inexpensive (some are free) and work on every device you own.