In today’s internet web sites frequently require you to have a username (often your email address) and a password before you can use them. Often they require you to use quite a complex password. Although it might seem simplest to use the same password for different web sites this is a really bad idea.
Different web sites have different levels of importance to you – and put more, or less – effort into protecting the information you supply to them. If your username and password (and other personal information) are stolen from one web site they will be sold on the ‘dark web’ and criminals will try to use them to access your bank and other web sites. You can limit this risk by using different passwords and managing them with a Password Manager. You should also consider using Plus Addressing for an extra level of safety, where your email address is different for each site too.
There are web sites which offer to remember all your passwords for you, but you should consider the possibility that these are a very tempting target for criminals.
Good criteria for a local password manager are being widely used (so many people are thinking about it’s security), open source (so the way it works can be reviewed by outsiders) and multiplatform (so you can use the same password database on different types of computer, such as laptop and phone).
Keepassxc
Keepassxc is a good choice for this, particularly as it is available to Windows MacOS and Linus, and KeepassDX can read the same database on Android.
Unlock password
You need to pick a password for your password database – you will be typing it a lot so, unlike some passwords complex mixtures of special characters can be annoying, particularly as you may be entering it on a phone with a restricted keyboards.
How about ‘aetmwtlwstg’ – that is fairly short, all lower case, and easy to remember. – Well it is if you know that it is the first letter of each word of the second line of ‘Mary had a little lamb’ – clearly you should not use this actual example, or ‘bwtstwwabtwtc’ – same idea, but towards the end of Paradise Lost, just after ‘Some natural tears they dropped’. If you are more into sport than literature then favourite – but preferably slightly obscure – player, with something added to make them harder to guess – ‘raducanua’ for emmA raducanu for example.
Multiple Databases
You should keep personal and work passwords in different databases, with different unlock passwords. If you share passwords, or for example door entry codes, with a team, they can go in another database, with an unlock password know to the team.