this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2023
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Privacy
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Well, I work in the IT so I know some stuff about security in the digital world. But these systems (password managers in general) are built to be secure and not just tell every password they store without some security measures. Yes, I know there can be security holes, bugs and so on. But that's why these tools get thoroughly tested.
You always have to take risks in the world of computers. So what's the point? Being as secure as possible? Then better not even bother with password managers at all because they all can have security holes.
It's more about how much you trust a password manager and how much you trust yourself in how cautious you use it. The risk is always there.
Ok. I’m quite the IT person myself, and I can say I’d not recommend you running your own either.
That's fair. Everyone has a different opinion. But I think it's always better to self-host Bitwarden than using the cloud service because then your passwords are stored in a place where you have full control of. Afaik if you use the official Bitwarden vault your passwords are stored on some Amazon servers.
Self hosting is not for everyone. You need to understand backup, redundancy and recovery. That would be the main reason I don’t recommend self-hosting. Bitwardens self-hosting package are mature enough for me.
So it’s more about loosing all your passwords than someone breaking in to your vault
Actually it's not that big of a problem. All clients make a local copy of the server's database when they sync. So even when the server is unavailable you still keep your local copy on your client. Every client of Bitwarden offers the option to export your whole database. This means you could easily use that to import your exported database to any other instance.
The only "big problem" I see is to learn how to self-host. Most people are not tech-savvy so they don't know how to do it and don't even want to learn it.
Security is only one part of it. If you host a password manager yourself then things like availability, backups, disaster recovery and monitoring also become your responsibility. I'm hosting my own vaultwarden but there is only a very limited amount of people I would suggest self hosting a password manager to, because I know they have the knowledge to do it and understand the risks.
Since every client of Bitwarden makes a copy of the whole database on the server when it syncs, it's not like all your credentials are lost when the server gets unavailable. You can make an export of your database on that client and import it on another instance. This said you already have a built-in backup feature.