Yes, you need a password manager. Here’s why.
So Guemmy, you're... Which I agree with. You're telling us to have hard to break into passwords. But then the obvious question is how does a normal human being manage all of these passwords, that don't have regular words in them? They can't reuse the same password over and over. How do we manage all of this?
Yes, great question. It is really hard to keep up with all of the different services. I don't know about you, but I use over a hundred services, and the only reason I know that, (Sal and Guemmy laugh) is actually because I've used a password manager, and seeing the list actually surprised me. Password managers are great, because they can automatically save the passwords for you. And they're super convenient, because once you go back to a website, not only do they check that it's not like a phishing website or somebody pretending to be the legitimate website, but they'll also conveniently fill in your password for you, and you just click a button. And so it's super quick, especially if you're on mobile. It's been a lifesaver.
One thing that I've always worried about password managers, is sometimes I'm logging in from my laptop, sometimes from my phone, sometimes from my wife's laptop, will the password managers work across multiple devices?
Yeah, different password managers definitely have different capabilities, but at least on Google, when you're signed into your Google account, on the various devices, then yes, we can pull together all of the information, from that password manager, and display it on the different devices that you're using.
And how do you compare a password manager, which can kind of store all of these things locally, and be able to fill in when you need it, and keep track of it. To being able to use a service. You know, obviously Google has it, you have Apple, you have other folks, who have once you sign into that account, that allows you to sign into other accounts. Do you recommend both? How do you compare those two things?
I think it's up to the user's choice, and so sometimes users are going to be limited because of what the website developer has done. For example, not all websites offer the sign in with Google, with Apple, sign in with Facebook, et cetera. But all websites do have passwords, and so at a minimum you can always have your own username, and password for that service, and then store it in the password manager. Alternatively, if you don't wanna create a bunch of new accounts all over the internet, you could definitely use your Google account for instance, and sign in into various services using your Google account. I personally like that option because it actually reduces the number of different accounts I have to worry about. And I mean of course Google is backed by the strongest security, among the strongest in the industry, so it's something that I feel good about.
Thanks for that Guemmy.