Password Manager

PRAISETHESUN

inspectorperez said:

I have been reading this thread with interest being extremely conscious of password security. I generally use long auto generated passwords for most sites.
What does occur to me is though how the executors of the future deal with banking institutions or other organisations when administering the affairs of a deceased? I guess it probably becomes totally academic and back to old fashioned correspondence by letter.
The one I use is Keepass (for desktop) with its little sister Mini Keepass for iPad. The developer unfortunately no longer supports the software, so I shall have to move on.

Some password managers offer a way to securely share passwords, although they often charge for this privilege. LastPass does this for example. I don't really think it's needed however.

The way I manage this is to maintain a physical record of important accounts (eg. bank account numbers, etc - no passwords) and some contact details for the organisations concerned. My NOK has their email account set as a backup address for my email account so can reset the password if required (this does requires some level of trust which I'm prepared to accept) which will then allow them to reset passwords to any linked online accounts if needed. My other biggest concern is my multiple bank accounts so I've left instructions on how to switch these using CASS as this doesn't need online banking access. For everything else I anticipate the tried and tested snail mail process will be sufficient, but at least there is a list of who they should be contacting to help make things a little easier.

PRAISETHESUN

getmore4less said:

dbrookf said:

Another question please! What if I want to stop using the Manager and I used their randomly selected passwords? How could I retrieve them?

When I moved over to a manager was surprised how many sites I had, still not done them all as months later some are very infrequent use and could never remember even when simple PW. Let the manager do its stuff remembering the info. My backup solution in case the manager access becomes an issue or no longer wanted is a printout. Not ideal as that needs to be secured in the house. The follow up issue is when you keel over does someone know what accounts you have or know how to access a list.

I spent 2 hrs on a Sunday afternoon changing passwords when I first started my password manager and it's now super easy to manage after the initial set up. Even now years later I still occasionally get reminded about an old account I'd forgotten about and reset the password and save it to the manager. I'd rather an old, unused password not get out in case I've reused it on another account somewhere else that I've also forgotten about. As I allude to in my post above I personally don't like the idea of leaving a physical copy of my passwords sitting around for potentially anyone to find, but rather give I've given someone the ability to reset them securely if it's ever needed.

arnhemrd

Password managers do sound ideal, in theory at least, as we all have multiple sites requiring passwords. I have at the very least 42, so would benefit from this system of saving passwords.

My only reservations would be on how the banks, and other financial institutions, would look on the fact, that you have effectively given your passwords to a 'third party',especially if money goes astray even if not the account holders fault.

Are there any statements or advisory notes published from banks, etc, that condone or even welcome the use of these, password managers?

Neil_Jones

The bank will never know if you use a password manager or not.  If you want to tell them that that's up to you.

Likewise they'll never know if you use the regularly pushed Rapport software or not that pops up every time you go there.  The website responds (in theory) to whether it can see it or not, more often than not it can't but that's beside the point.

mksysb

arnhemrd said:

Password managers do sound ideal, in theory at least, as we all have multiple sites requiring passwords. I have at the very least 42, so would benefit from this system of saving passwords.

My only reservations would be on how the banks, and other financial institutions, would look on the fact, that you have effectively given your passwords to a 'third party',especially if money goes astray even if not the account holders fault.

Are there any statements or advisory notes published from banks, etc, that condone or even welcome the use of these, password managers?

Password managers do not have to be in the cloud, you can easily keep the manager on your local computer if you don't trust a cloud provider with your passwords.

dbrookf

mksysb said:

arnhemrd said:

Password managers do sound ideal, in theory at least, as we all have multiple sites requiring passwords. I have at the very least 42, so would benefit from this system of saving passwords.

My only reservations would be on how the banks, and other financial institutions, would look on the fact, that you have effectively given your passwords to a 'third party',especially if money goes astray even if not the account holders fault.

Are there any statements or advisory notes published from banks, etc, that condone or even welcome the use of these, password managers?

Password managers do not have to be in the cloud, you can easily keep the manager on your local computer if you don't trust a cloud provider with your passwords.

How?

Were_Doomed

Search for offline password manager.

getmore4less

LastPass  the provider technically has no access to the information  they just look after the file(encrypted) so it can be accessed on other devices. (also provide the tools that runs on the devices)


With all you are relying on them not sneaking a look at the data even totally offline ones

PRAISETHESUN

There is a degree of trust that is needed with these companies, unless you use something open source and have the technical skills to verify the code yourself - even then that does not necessarily guarantee that the code is 100% secure, only that there are no currently known exploits. Generally however I personally think the risk coming from weak, re-used passwords is much greater than any issues that come from the provider of the password manager - if they regularly got hacked or got caught snooping around your data then they wouldn't stay in business for very long

dbrookf

I currently use my fingerprint to automatically complete sign in including passwords on a lot of websites – would a password manager compromise this?