No Stupid Questions

Bitwarden and keepass are. Don't use lastpass or the other bullshit youtube sponsors.

Yupp, just away from Lastpass. 🤮

Can't believe noone mentioned this yet:

Any good password manager encrypts and decrypts your password file client side. The server should not even have the ability to read your passwords.

Even in the case of a leak of all of the server's data, as long as your password for the manager was good, you've got nothing to worry about.

I'd say pick a PW manager where both client and server are open source. Pick a strong passphrase. Enjoy.

I like to keep all my eggs in one basket, that way you can really keep an eye on them.

There's no guarantee anything is "secure," anymore. Even if you run a self-hosted password manager, it could still be compromised at the package-level or down the road through some exploit. I will say that since I started using Bitwarden as my main password manager, I have had to worry less about company data breaches and stolen passwords. I have no need to reuse passwords for any site or service. I can use the built-in 2FA with sites that require it and don't have to have multiple apps. I can share passwords with my wife if she needs to access something under my name.

In addition to storing logins, I can store secure notes, even storing login-specific notes within the login details for things like one-time-use passwords, etc. I can store various credit/debit cards and recall them into payment systems whenever I want, without storing them in a browser. When using the phone, I can tie the biometrics to the unlocking of my vault so, with the vault locked, I can easily unlock it to find the login/info I need to submit to an app or website.

Obviously, all this comes with their own risks, but the level of risk of a password management is far lower than the risk of reused passwords and the mismanagement of security at the corporate-level. If you're really hard-up to keep your stuff offline, other products exist that are locally stored, but you'll likely miss out on access from outside the home in the event you need that login info somewhere else.

Edit: I'll also point out that the best passwords are ones that rely on unaffiliated words, with numbers or symbols sprinkled in. If I need to remember the password without my phone/outside help, I'll rely on a password of 3-4 random words. Many of the password management tools available have some sort of password generation and Bitwarden's can generate randomized character passwords or randomized word passwords. Once I find a word combo I like and can remember somewhat, I add a capital randomly, a number somewhere, and maybe even a symbol to make a password that would take million of years with current tech to decipher.

As always, you do you, but I find password management tools such as Bitwarden, with a minimal yearly price tag, worth it for the ease of password generation/storage and the ability to access those passwords wherever I need to.

I do SyncThing and KeePass.

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syncthing
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KeePass

Their URLs at time of writing are https://syncthing.net/ and https://keepass.info/

I don't remember which KeePass UI for Android I use. I think I use Syncthing Fork on Android

That gives me the benefits of a cloud password manager, but the only cloud infrastructure is whatever SyncThing uses to do its peer-to-peer tricks. The password database is encrypted on disk with my root password, and then it's encrypted end-to-end in transit because every SyncThing node knows the public keys of my other nodes.

I almost never upgrade KeePass because I'm afraid of losing access to my passwords on my phone. SyncThing I do upgrade because that's easier to fix.

If you upgrade regularly, you're vulnerable to the project being compromised. If you never upgrade, you're vulnerable to whatever old code is vulnerable to. Personally I err on the side of not upgrading often.

I also have my own implementation of diceware https://www.eff.org/dice

Remember to think about your backup strategy if you use locally managed password software. I’ve helped (and been unable to help) some non-technical folks who relied on popular magazine/new site articles for software selection without good knowledge of how to properly backup their data.

It's a balance of probabilities, like everything in security. Which is more likely? A. People are careful, using good, strong passwords, and maintain vigilance, but are targetted by an advanced attacker who will hack the protonpass system to get their database and the necessary keys to open it? Or B. People get lazy, use the same password for everything because remembering stuff is hard, and everything they own ends up protected by the modern equivalent of combo 1, 2, 3, 4, 5?

If you are truly capable of generating and memorizing enough good passwords to handle all of your accounts, that is technically more secure, because a password manager can create a single point of failure for all accounts. However, most people aren't able to do that and will resort to crap passwords or using the same single crap password for every site.

The only big danger of a good password manager is the fact all your passwords are stored under one.

To mitigate the risk, follow these practices:

• Use a good trusted, much preferably open-source option (for example, Vaultwarden, KeePassXC);
• Use a strong password;
• Do not EVER use the same password you use for password manager elsewhere;
• Use 2FA on both your password manager itself and all the accounts you store passwords for;
• Backup your password database in an encrypted way.

Together, these measures should save you from any trouble.

Now, why they are good:

• They can generate and store very strong passwords you would never make up, much less remember;
• You can be sure you won't forget your password;
• They are convenient and can auto-fill passwords for you.

Generally, using a password manager is considered a superior option in terms of security and availability compared to keeping your password elsewhere, including your head.

I think they can be much more secure than:

• remembering your ( probably weak ) passwords

• writing passwords on paper, which is slow, you can lose paper, break it, or someone can steal it

• storing passwords in unencrypted text file

• reusing passwords/password!

I use KeepassXC, which is offline, encrypted password manager. Every password is stored in one file, which to access, I must enter the one password I do remember. I recommend having backups of this file.

It has password generator included, so all my password are long, strong and unique. It also can auto fill password/login which saves time.

To increase security of your account even further you should also use multiple factor authentication, for example app which generates one time codes on your phone offline. It will protect you, even if your password gets leaked, or cracked.

Without password managers: You either have weak passwords, or you constantly forget passwords and get locked out of your accounts.

Or you can remember the password to your email then use that to reset passwords every time and slam your head on the keyboard to generate a random password that you won't need to remember because you'll just reset it next time, but then its a hassle and you are relying on one point of failure, and you could get locked out if you email stops working.

So in conclusion: Password Managers

With the arrival of near infinite phonebooks, the drive and know-how to remember 100s of phone numbers is lost to humanity.

Passwords present added complexity to those of phone numbers. On top of a name to number (allowing a few collisions) passwords are required to be of certain length, contain an upper case letter, lower case letter, number, special character, and more importantly, a preset lifetime.

Password managers seem to be a safer and low stress bet for the vast majority. There will always a few exceptions who can do it all in their head. They don't tend to advertise their presence.

It's more secure than not using one (if it's open source and offline), so just do it.

Any password manager is a good and secure alternative because they do not have any interest in knowing or exposing your password. They will run out of business very quick if they allow it! Passwords are just a method to identify you as you in the internet so they can sell you stuff! Even google will go to great extents to guarantee you is you because is at its core business. For sites where you do not trust passwords you can use 2FA of a secondary provider. For sites that are really important you probably will have a dedicated app (government ids, work…) as they do have invested interest on nobody else knowing your password. So yes, they are as secure as technically possible.

Special note about file based PM: the only person interested on that file to be secret is you! So those are great source of discomfort for me as files are heavily analyzed by systems and platforms. And any file can be brute forced open given enough processing power or enough tech (AI, Quantum computing…) So don’t lie yourself: going lone wolf do not make it safer.

There are weaknesses and attack vectors, but they are in my opinion more secure than almost all realistic alternatives. If you think you've come up with a better system, by all means, implement it. I commend your skepticism of following the herd and may it serve you well. But beware of pursuing security through obscurity. People recommend password managers because they are one of the best solutions available for navigating this complex threat environment we live in and they are appropriate for most people's situations.

Risk assessment is a big part of this. Risk when reusing passwords is very high. Risk of forgetting passwords or using weaker/guessable passwords when they’re unique, is high. Password manager mitigates these risks. A good one will also bark at you when you try to use a password in a website that isn’t the one you saved it in (ie phishing warning)

The risk of your PW manager somehow leaking passwords is worth considering. So we ask: How are the passwords stored? Where are they stored? How are they accessed? Different tools work differently; some keep the storage local but others sync in the cloud. Local storage can also mean “in my Dropbox folder”. If it’s a secure format with a strong password (or perhaps Yubikey), that’s fine, but if it’s an excel sheet, you’re leaking to Dropbox. But is that really a problem for you? Think of the steps between an adversary and your password file.

1Password has some white papers published about how they secure the data you entrust them with.

It is my strong opinion, and that of most security experts, that using a password manager to create unique, long, and secure passwords is a lot better than the alternative. It’s usually the opinion that a password notebook in a reasonably secure location (in your desk at home) is better than recycling weak passwords.

Remembering (and inevitably) forgetting passwords for all your different accounts is inconvenient, frustrating, and arguably less secure than a randomly generated password unique to each account.

Additionally, it can be tempting to reuse passwords for multiple accounts, which is trouble when a less-than-reputable service that you used that password on is breached, since that password wasn't unique.

If you use an open-source, tried and true password manager (Bitwarden, Vaultwarden, KeePassXC) and keep a passphrase unique to that password manager only, you avoid the problems above which are way more likely to occur than Bitwarden passwords getting breached in plaintext, or a security vulnerability to the KeePass database.

Plus, most password managers offer support for passkeys, which are easier to register/use than passwords. They usually only require a "verify with passkey" button on a given website.

Bottom line, password managers are probably (definitely) more secure than any other reasonable solution that anyone has come up with.

I think your question has been answered by other pretty well but I'll add: If you decide a password manager is overall beneficial and choose one that looks secure, don't assume it will stay that way. LastPass taught us that a couple decisions that are valid one day can turn into huge liabilities in a few years as threats escalate. You to have to periodically check in on what secops pros are saying about your manager and make sure they haven't been resting on their laurels. Security is a job we all have.

I use a Keepass database that I save on my nas so I can access it from any device.

To oversimplify:

Very secure, unique passwords written on paper and stored safely > Local password manager using secure passwords > cloud/synced password manager with secure passwords > anything with insecure passwords.

The trick is, will you actually maintian these security practices or will you start getting lazy if its too inconvenient (such as using a long password, and having to manually type it out).

What makes you think they aren't secure?

Most will tell you how the password is stored and assuming they implemented the encryption algorithm correctly it should be rather difficult to break the vault open.

It means that you can use more secure passwords rather than using easy to guess passwords/one password for everything. Using cloud based ones like Bitwarden means you have to trust the company hosting your passwords to not screw up and suffer from a data leak. I think Bitwarden is pretty trustworthy, but I might be wrong on that one.

Alternatively, you could selfhost (with something like Vaultwarden) or just use something local like KeePass. For the latter, you can choose to sync with SyncThing if you want.

I personally use KeePass, but don’t use SyncThing.

Like the other commenter said - people recommend them for peace of mind so you don't have to think about knowing a password for the 2653rd account you set up once and are never using again. It's the next best thing to just remembering complex passwords.

I've used Dashlane for years, personally, but I know people here will immediately shut that down for not being FOSS. Bitwarden is FOSS but requires some technical setup and has no redundancy.

Don't get me wrong, I love self-hosting as much as the rest of us but I'm not trusting my server from 2013 with all my passwords to everything.

I’ve always thought it wasn’t very secure

Why? They are way better than you anyway (to generate random stuff, to recognize URLs, to store data encrypted, etc.)

I don't trust the online one, I only use https://pwsafe.org/

I don't see how anyone can get by without one nowadays. Now online vs something local is a big deal. I use online for unimportant passwords and local for important passwords. With important being financial mostly but some other things. Unimportant are things that if I lost access to and ended up never using again would not like ruin my life.

Keepass is as secure as you make it to be, you can use derivatives like keepassXC but some have had insecure bugs (they still need access to your password db file)

They are less secure than a notebook but more secure than anything else

Yes, but it depends on which one you use. Some are better than others. The ones that can be hosted locally (i.e. keepass) are the most secure because you are not relying on a third party to host your password vault for you. It would be helpful to know why you think they aren't very secure, so people can help clarify.