We often recommend using a password manager like 1Password, LastPass or. Dashlane, but we\u2019ve gotten a few questions asking why we\u2019re so adamant about this. Lots of people think that all they need to do to keep their online accounts secure is create a single password with some numbers, often switching a lowercase L with a 1 and a capital E with a 3. And that\u2019s for accounts people care about\u2014for those that they don\u2019t see as important, they\u2019re likely to use a simple password like their child\u2019s or pet\u2019s name. Plus, most people don\u2019t think they have much to protect or that they would be targeted by hackers, so they reuse the same password across multiple sites.<\/p>\n
Guess what? Such an approach is extremely dangerous on today\u2019s Internet. First off, no one is explicitly targeted. The bad guys get passwords by stealing them by the millions from Web sites with lax security. Then they use sophisticated hardware that can try over 350 billion passwords per second<\/i> to decrypt as many of the stolen passwords as possible. All passwords under 13 characters can be cracked easily by such hardware.<\/p>\n
Next, imagine you have a password on a shopping site whose passwords are stolen. The attackers can log in to that site, change your shipping address, and order items with your stored credit card. But they won\u2019t stop there. They\u2019ll use automated software to try that username and password combination on lots of other high-profile sites: Google, Apple, Amazon, eBay, Facebook, many banks, and so on. If they can get in anywhere, they\u2019ll take over the account and exploit it in any way they can, which could involve stealing money, ordering goods, or using it to reset passwords and lock you out of other accounts. It can get ugly fast.<\/a><\/p>\n Use a password manager to generate, store, and enter strong passwords, one for each site, and you\u2019ll never have any of these problems. A sufficiently strong password (16 characters minimum, but we recommend 20 when possible) will withstand cracking efforts for centuries, and if you have a different password for every site, even one password being compromised won\u2019t expose any of your other accounts to abuse.<\/p>\n Here then are five reasons for using a password manager:<\/p>\n There are many different password managers, but for most people, there are three main choices. If you use only Safari on the Mac and in iOS, Apple\u2019s built-in iCloud Keychain<\/a> feature may be sufficient.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re mostly an Apple user but also need support for Windows and Android, or if you want to share some passwords with family members or your workgroup, 1Password<\/a> is the best choice. It costs $3 per month for an individual or $5 per month for a family, with team and business accounts as well. 1Password also offers add-ons for non-Apple browsers like Chrome and Firefox.<\/p>\n And if 1Password is too expensive, or if you\u2019re platform agnostic, LastPass<\/a>\u00a0or Dashlane<\/a> offers a solid set of features for free. Additional features and password sharing cost $3 -5 per month for individuals and $4 – 10 per month for families, and again, team and enterprise accounts are available.<\/p>\n If you need help choosing among these suggestions or setting them up, particularly in the context of a small business, get in touch with us. And if you\u2019d like us to write more about each of these options, just drop us a note and we\u2019ll see what we can do.<\/p>\n Want to know more? iOS 12 Supports Password Managers!<\/a><\/p>\n (Featured image by CMDR Shane<\/a> on Unsplash<\/a>)<\/p>\n A password manager like iCloud Keychain, 1Password, Dashlane or LastPass to generate, store, and enter strong passwords. Any other approach risks your accounts being hacked. Here\u2019s why a password manager is so important.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7165,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,184,69,25,112,185,104],"tags":[928,126,70,49],"class_list":["post-7164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-apple","category-apple-consultants","category-apple-consulting-ct","category-mac","category-mac-support-ct","category-mactech","category-security","tag-apple-consultants","tag-apple-consulting-ct","tag-mac-consulting-ct","tag-security"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macworks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macworks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macworks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macworks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macworks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7164"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.macworks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7176,"href":"https:\/\/www.macworks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7164\/revisions\/7176"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macworks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macworks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macworks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macworks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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