What Is a Password Manager?

What to do: Set up Bitwarden and use it for every account. The sysadmin can help you set it up.

A password manager is a program that makes up very strong passwords for you and remembers them, so you don’t have to.

Say you’re opening an online banking account. You want a strong password. The last two pages explained that a strong password is long, isn’t made of common words, and isn’t used anywhere else. Something like this:

7xDFCCP7ii7jHgAwcHsBRP6g$

Nobody could remember that. And people are bad at making up random passwords; we fall into patterns without noticing.

A password manager solves both problems. That password was made by Bitwarden, a free password manager. When you create the bank account, Bitwarden saves the website, your username, and the password. The next time you sign in, Bitwarden fills them in for you. Now you have a machine just as powerful as the burglar’s, putting a different, complicated lock on every door.

Isn’t It Risky to Keep Every Password in One Place?

What if somebody steals your Bitwarden vault (the place it keeps your passwords)?

The vault is locked with one master password. Without it, the vault is just scrambled gibberish. So there’s still one password you have to remember. Because it’s the only one, you can afford to make it long and strong but still memorable, for example several random words strung together:

Amiable-Granite-Spoiler8-Grandson-Unhidden-Muppet

Don’t forget your master password. If you lose it, nobody (not even Bitwarden) can get your passwords back. Write it on paper and keep it somewhere safe at home until you’ve memorized it.

Getting Started

The easiest way to learn this is with someone showing you, so ask the sysadmin to walk you through it. If you’d like to do it yourself:

1. Create a Bitwarden account at bitwarden.com. If you get stuck, follow Bitwarden’s instructions.
2. Install the browser extension on your computer, for the browser you use (for example Google Chrome). It’s on the Bitwarden download page.
3. Install the app on your phone, from the same page.
4. The next time you sign in to a website, let Bitwarden save the password. When you have time, use Bitwarden to change your old passwords to new random ones, starting with your email and bank accounts.

We recommend Bitwarden because its free plan is generous and it works on Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and iPhone. Alternatives include 1Password (similar, but costs more) and KeePassXC (doesn’t sync between your devices on its own).

Note: We don’t recommend the Bitwarden desktop app or the Bitwarden Authenticator app. The desktop app is built on technology with a weaker security record than a regular browser, and there are better authenticator apps (see TOTP).

Note: Elsewhere on this site we recommend against browser extensions, because they add security risk. That’s still true, but a password manager extension is far safer than no password manager at all. If you don’t mind a little extra hassle, you can skip the extension and use the Web Vault website instead.