How Do Password Managers Work?
Techquickie
·Techquickie
·2019-05-06
·
1,135 words · ~5 min read
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thanks for watching techwiki click the subscribe button then enable
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notifications with the bell icon so you won't miss any future videos wouldn't it
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be nice if everyone was just honest 100 of the time well okay well actually no
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that could have unforeseen consequences but it would at least relieve us of the
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hassle of keeping track of tons of passwords security questions and pins
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just to keep narrative wells out of our personal biz
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and this isn't a small problem one study from 2017 indicated that it is
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typical for a single email address to be used for a hundred and thirty online
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accounts how are you supposed to remember all those passwords i mean i
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can't even name 130 of the original pokemon
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we got bulbasaur charmander pikachu
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squirtle got like uh it's snorlax of pokemon you got eevee
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eevee is a pokemon i think the little caterpillar one did you say
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amish oh oddish that makes more sense
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um what's magikarp magikarp oh i hate magikarp
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so this is where a good password manager might be able to save the day for you
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the idea behind a password manager is that all of your passwords will be
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stored in one place but of course i'm not talking about the
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super high tech method of writing them down on a piece of paper need to make a
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password just add it to your password minder instead a password manager will
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securely store your passwords behind one
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master password this way you'll only have to remember one strong password
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instead of 130 while still keeping those others away from prying eyes now there
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are plenty of password managers out there but the first decision that you'll
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need to make when choosing one is whether you want a local or a
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cloud-based solution password managers that you install
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locally on one computer are actually still a viable option these days they
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keep your passwords encrypted on your own hard drive which means that you
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don't have to trust the cloud although some of them do offer optional cloud
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backup the issue though is that while local
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password managers can offer a little bit of comfort to those who are worried
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about a prominent cloud-based solution becoming a target of hackers they can
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also mean that your passwords will all be lost if something happens to your
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computer or worse if someone steals it
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so these days cloud-based password managers have gotten much more popular
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as your password sit on a secure server somewhere that can be accessed from
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anywhere else allowing you to quickly get into your important accounts if
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something happens to your phone or your laptop but many password managers come
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with features outside of just saving your passwords for example most of them
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can auto-generate pseudo-random secure passwords for all of your accounts and
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then auto-fill them for you by means of a browser extension or a smartphone app
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this is especially useful because it encourages you to avoid the widespread
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and terrible practice of reusing the
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same password over and over on different sites this is really important because
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duplicate passwords mean that an attacker who steals let's say your
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instagram password could then also suddenly have access to your email and
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once they've got your email think about how many services like even your bank
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account that can be reset by sending a password recovery email
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so make sure that you take advantage of this feature regardless of what password
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manager that you go with other useful features include sharing account access
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with folks of your choosing either permanently by just showing them the
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login directly or temporarily by auto
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filling it for them automatically changing passwords for sites that have
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been breached and two-factor authentication which you can learn more
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about right up here so sounds pretty good then right well it
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is but before you rush out to configure a
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password manager keep a couple of caveats in mind the biggest one is that
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you must use and remember a strong master
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password this is not only to ensure that no one else can guess it but also
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because the strength of the encryption used to protect all your other passwords
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is often tied to how strong your master password is so if you're not sure how to
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pick a secure master password we actually have a video to help you with
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that up here also i know it's a hassle to remember a
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strong password but at least this way you only need to commit one of them to
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memory the next one is that two-factor
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authentication i mentioned before you should use it on your password manager
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for sure but you should also keep using
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a separate app for that on the individual accounts that support it this
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is just in case somebody does get into your password manager which could
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otherwise be a single point of failure if it's ever compromised so although
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some password managers integrate two-factor functionality personally i'd
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rather take the few extra seconds to punch in those six digits myself
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