Manage passwords like a pro
David Court finds a way to get on top of his many passwords to stay safe online.
Icompleted a task this week that I’ve been putting off for more than a decade – I finally got on top of my passwords. All 752 of them. And it feels great.
The process took about three full minutes. And now, available at my fingertips, I have the username and password to every website or app I’ve visited over the past 10 years (at least). I literally mean ‘‘fingertips’’ too, thanks to the TouchID sensor on my iPhone and MacBook Pro.
How did I remember 752 usernames and passwords before? Easy. I didn’t.
Instead, I relied totally on the Chrome web browser asking me if I wanted to ‘‘save password’’ whenever it detected a login/ registration to a new website.
Chrome’s free, built-in password manager was already (sort of) functional, and worked fine when I was using my laptop. But when I needed to log in to something on my smartphone, tablet or other connected devices, its limitations were soon evident.
It forced me to adopt a lengthy workaround where I had to find a Chrome browser – one where I was already signed in – and then visit the hugely user-unfriendly webpage passwords.google.com.
I’d then have to enter another lengthy password – full of numbers, punctuation, upper/ lower-case letters – to, somewhat ironically, access another password. Yuk.
Meet 1Password
I used the premium app 1Passwords (US$3.99, or NZ$6.30, a month). Admittedly, that’s not cheap. But the convenience and, more importantly, the security it gives me online is priceless.
The app offers everything I need. It integrates with my laptop, web browser, and iOS and Android mobile devices (almost) seamlessly.
Now, whenever I visit a login screen on my laptop 1Password pops-up on screen, and all I need to do is click the extension and my username and password auto-fills. The process is even slicker on my iPhone where iOS automatically detects that I am at a login page and gives me the option to tap across my username and password. It’s a dream.
Best of all, for me, 1Password lets you export and import data from other password manager apps. Which means migrating existing data only takes a couple of minutes to set up rather than a couple of hours.
I know what you’re thinking. What happens if 1Password has a data breach? The answer is simple: nothing.
1Password uses AES 256-bit (military-grade) encryption for all your data and the only way to unencrypt this data is with your password.
So, as long as you can remember ‘‘one password’’ (get it?) all of your other passwords will remain encrypted and safe.
Why you should care
Getting on top of your passwords isn’t just a good idea from a convenience point of view – although this is a pretty good perk. It’s also the most important thing you can to do stay safe online.
In New Zealand, our data privacy laws haven’t changed since 1993. And even though they’re due for a much-needed update later this year, right now and ever since the internet became a thing, Kiwis are at the mercy of online brands having proper security protocols (not many do).
This means that if a company has a data breach – and these happen all the time – companies are not legally required to report it or immediately inform their users.
If you’re a security pro and diligently use a different password for each of your online accounts – a daunting thought for someone like me with more than 750 accounts – this isn’t too much of an issue. As the hackers behind the data breach will only have access to the one account they hacked.
However, most of us aren’t that tenacious at creating fresh passwords for new accounts. That means one data breach will likely give hackers our username and password to tens, or maybe hundreds, of different online accounts.
This is where 1Password offers another invaluable feature. It’s called ‘‘Watchtower’’ – a monitoring service that collects information about global data breaches.
If you have an account with any online service that’s been hacked, 1Password will send you an alert prompting you to change your password with that service. Better still, it’ll also find any other accounts where you’ve used the same password so you can change those login details too.
1Password offers a 30-day free trial – 1password.com/sign-up/.
Getting on top of your passwords isn’t just a good idea from a convenience point of view . . . It’s also the most important thing you can to do stay safe online.