Tip of the Week: Password Manager - Get One If you Haven't Already

First things first; Check if any of your accounts on the web has been compromised in the various data breaches. All you need is enter your email address in haveibeenpwned, and it tells you the rest.

My email did show up on multiple breaches, and there is nothing much that you can do about it anyways. The problem with data breaches is not confined just to the site that got breached but also with other sites if you have reused your passwords. The best that we can do is to use different passwords for each account that we create and never reuse them across sites. Also, remember to use 'stronger' passwords. So what makes a password stronger? - The one that you cannot remember.

A Password manager assists in generating, storing, and retrieving complex passwords from an encrypted database

Password Managers allows keeping all your passwords in a single strongly encrypted location. This manager itself is protected by a password - the master password!. The master password is the only password that you need to remember, so make sure you get this really strong!

There are different password managers out there, both paid and free. Personally, I use 1Password and love the experience that it has across all my devices. Initially, I was worried to have my passwords (password since I was mostly reusing the same one) on a cloud store with an external service. But with all these data breaches that I was part of and having realized that not having one is worse than having it in the cloud. Password managers don't have to be perfect, they just have to be better than not having one. Having a password manager does not prevent your from being part of data breaches, but at least it protects your accounts elsewhere as you have not reused the password.

So if you still remember your passwords or reuse them, go set yourself up with a password manager!