It might sound weird but YES you should stop remembering passwords if you want to protect your accounts.
Why? You ask.
Simply because over time people use a lot of services which require them to have different email id/username and password. It becomes really hard to remember the password for each and every account that you own. For this, many people tend to use the same password with all their accounts, which is a really really bad idea. If one of your accounts gets compromised and the attacker has your password they can access other accounts since all use the same password.
The worst case scenario is when you don’t even have a two-factor authentication setup on your account. If that’s the case you should definitely use a two-factor authentication mechanism. More information about Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) in an upcoming article.
Coming back to passwords, it is hard to remember very complicated passwords, for which people use very simple passwords. A list of most commonly used passwords can be found on Google. If your password is on this list you must seriously consider installing a password manager.
If not, precaution is always better.
So, What is a Password Manager?
A Password Manager is a software which helps users create, store and manage all their passwords in one place. It stores your entire login credential for any application or website and provides an auto-fill option everytime you are on that particular application or website.
All this information is stored in an encrypted manner using a master password that you need to remember. And that’s it, everything else is taken care of by the password manager.
When it comes to security, most of these applications use 256-bit AES encryption. As soon as your password leaves your device the password is encrypted before reaching their servers, which makes it really hard to be intercepted. Also, in case the servers get compromised somehow, you are still safe since your passwords are ingrained in layers of encryption.
Which Password Manager to use?
There are different password managers available out there. Some are free while some are paid. However, the main functionality of all of them remains the same. The difference you could find in paid and free version is mostly the sync feature, which allows you to add new credentials from any of your devices and that gets reflected on all the devices linked to the same account.
Also, apart from keying-in your password for a particular site, you can generate a password using the app itself. There are different options you can select while creating a password, and now since you don’t need to remember them you can create them as hard and complex as you want.
All you need to do is select the length and special characters that you want your password to have and the app will generate a password for you.
Some of the most commonly used Password Managers are —
* LastPass
* DashLane
* 1Password
* Keeper
* Keypass
Conclusion —
It’s you who has to find out which one suits your requirements and you feel comfortable with.
Personally, I have used most of them and in my opinion, I found LastPass to be the best among all. It’s free and syncs passwords across all devices, and most importantly it is safe like any other password manager.
I have also enabled two-factor authentication for my LastPass account, which is an added step but provides more security.
Whichever password manager you decide to use, the only thing that’s important is using one!
