Can we talk about password managers and that one weird trick?

For years I thought password managers were just a hassle, another thing to set up and pay for. I kept using the same few passwords with little changes, you know the drill. The thing that changed my mind was when my bank account got a weird login attempt from a city I've never been to. I freaked out and called their support line. The person there told me, 'Sir, your password was on a list from a data breach two years ago.' That hit me hard. I finally downloaded Bitwarden that same night. The trick was letting it make those crazy long passwords for me, the ones I would never remember. Now it fills everything in, and I only have to remember one strong master password. Has anyone else had a close call that finally pushed them to use one?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_nathan2mo ago

My close call was with a work email account. Someone got in and sent a bunch of spam to my whole contact list. It was super embarrassing and took forever to fix. That mess finally got me to stop reusing passwords.

clairen852mo ago

Ugh I have to disagree on the password manager thing. Those things freak me out, putting ALL your eggs in one basket. What if THAT gets hacked? I just use a simple system to make different passwords I can actually remember. Two-factor is a pain but yeah I turn it on for the big stuff like email and banking.

logan_young292mo agoMost Upvoted

Yeah that "stop reusing passwords" part is key. Honestly though, just having different passwords isn't enough if you don't have two-factor turned on. A unique password can still get leaked in a data breach. My buddy had a strong, unique password for an old forum, but that site got hacked and the password got out. Since he used it elsewhere, it was a domino effect. A password manager plus 2FA is the real fix.