BENEFITS OF STORING PASSWORDS

With everything being digital today, you need passwords to access everything. From buying your groceries to making an online money transfer. At this stage, you would agree that passwords have become a pain in our lives. Even though this digitalization has made our lives easier in the physical sense, they also give mental stress sometimes because of passwords. There are tons of passwords you probably have right now. We have all had to use them, struggle with them, and remember them for a very long time. And we have to be honest, sometimes we are not even sure about their safety. Since we use unsecure, really easy-to-guess passwords, and sometimes we even reuse them, which makes it easier for others to pry into our secure accounts. Therefore, you must also be fed up with password issues and confused about what to do or how to manage these passwords securely, right?

• First, you need to acknowledge that having a ton of passwords is part of reality now. They need to be different like they need to have uppercase, lowercase, numbers, punctuations, all the things that you might not use generally in your daily life. Now you can choose between knowing and tracking a whole bunch of different passwords or trusting one particular system that likes to sync to a cloud. 
• Because secondly, you have to choose the place where you want to put them. Since there are many options out there for you to store your passwords, you should choose one and commit to using just one system. 
• Thirdly, you should test them all and make sure that you have the correct info which means go through to all the different websites, online banking, subscriptions, everywhere that you log in, and then test the login info and do a password reset if you need to. Even if it means looking up past email addresses that you used to use and you don’t use anymore, just do those password rests and get everything in one place. In step four, once you have it confirmed, write it down. Put it in that place that you chose. Anytime that you change it, update it in that place. As long as it is there, you will never forget it. 
• Next, you can also change all your passwords to something you can remember more easily. Of course, this last one is totally optional.
• Also, if you ever need to give your password to somebody, just log in, change it temporarily, and then give them the changed one.

This is probably one of the most sorted ways to manage your passwords and keep them safe from hackers, identity thieves, and nosy friends or housemates. 

THE IMPORTANCE OF STORING PASSWORDS SECURELY

Reading this, you would surely be questioning why is it so important to securely store your passwords? The reason why we are emphasising storing and managing your passwords is that doing so will ensure the safety of your important accounts from snoopy or nebby people who might try to steal your data or money. Committing cybercrime has become easy with the latest technologies for hackers nowadays. Therefore they can crack your weak passwords in seconds like a child’s play. There could be a couple of threats or risks you may encounter if you fail to store passwords securely. That may include:

• Account Takeover: if you have a weak password to your various accounts including social media accounts, you may be risking giving control of your accounts to a hacker. A hacker may misuse your email or social media by taking over control of them. he/she might even contact your friends or family through them to ask for money or scam them out of private information.
• Financial loss: A hacker or a cyber thief will be able to gain access to your bank accounts on an online mode and can transfer your money to themselves through various means, all without your knowledge. Although there are federal protections for unauthorized transactions, it is a long process and by the time you resolve the issue, you might already become broke.
• Identity Theft: This could create a huge mess. Any person with ill intentions can get into your various accounts by cracking your easy password, and may steal your personal information like name, address, bank account details, photos and videos, and even your social security number. They could use this information to impersonate you and do all kinds of fraudulent or illegal things in your name. This could prove to be very much chaotic for you since you might get framed for something you never did. 

You can keep yourself away from all these risks and have a feeling of mental peace if you keep your digital life safe with the basic step of storing your passwords securely. 

HOW TO STORE PASSWORDS SECURELY

There are a bunch of options out there through which you can store your passwords in a safe way. These options could be free of cost and paid as well. The easiest way is to use a password manager feature of your internet browser. Or you could also go for a dedicated password that offers to store your username and password for each account. 

Browser Password managers

You must have already observed that all the popular internet browsers like Firefox, Chrome, Safari, or Bing offer you the feature of password management. They ask you if you want to save your password whenever you log into an account using a browser. You can either set the browser to ask you each time if you want to store your password whenever you create a new account or you can set the browser to automatically sign you in to your account whenever you try to log in. There are many plus points of using a browser to store your password as it is fast, free, and convenient. It is also free of cost. You don’t really have to do much and with just a few clicks in your browser setting, you can have your passwords stored.

Password Manager Applications

If you are not completely satisfied with your browser’s password storage feature, then you can go all-in for password manager applications. They could be of great help to you in many ways as:

• The password manager applications allow you to create new passwords, manage them and access them in a secure manner whenever you want readily.
• Since it would be difficult for you to come up with a new strong password every time, the password manager helps you to generate strong passwords with your choice in designating the number of characters or symbols you want to include.
• Many password managers offer their services free of cost. Their free basic plan can cover all your needs that might be looking for storing a password securely. 

As you would have seen, there are so many password managers out there. And it must be difficult to decide on choosing a password manager application. We would highly recommend you to opt for Passwarden. This could be your best option out of all as it has many brownies points and offers much more than just storing your passwords. It could help you to stay safe from all the risks mentioned above including identity theft and hacking. 

Pros of having a Passwarden for your aid:

• Passwarden which is the most trusted password manager for Mozilla Firefox covers all the security features you can desire. It includes client-side encryption, AES-256 and EC p-384 protocols, 2FA, and Duress Mode.
• It is the most easy-to-use application you can ask for. It only requires a single account for convenient data migration and supports all devices. 
• The sole reason for storing passwords is their safety. And Passwarden gives safe data sharing and syncing facility with its algorithms and cloud synchronization security.
• Most of all, it is a trusted security application that is tested and already has more than 35 million worldwide customers. 
• Passwarden provides two-factor authentication where no one except you can access your data and password storage.
• And it is so flexible as it supports all platforms including Windows, macOS, ioS, Android, Chrome, Firefox, Edge, or Web app.