Why Use Password Management Software
When you have a bunch of messy accounts, password management becomes very difficult. Many people reuse passwords for convenience, but sacrifice security. The best solution is to use random strong passwords and use password management software to maintain them.
Random strong passwords have no patterns, cannot be cracked by brute force, cannot be memorized, and cannot be manually entered. They must be used with the assistance of password management software.
Choosing Password Management Software
After repeated comparisons, we have chosen bitwarden as our password manager. Using bitwarden as a password manager has the following advantages:
- Easy to use
- Simply log in to the bitwarden official website to use bitwarden's online service.
- You can save and create an unlimited number of passwords. It can be synchronized across multiple devices and platforms, supporting all major computer and mobile systems.
- Supports browser extensions and password autofill.
- High security
- Uses end-to-end encryption. End-to-end encryption means that data is fully encrypted before leaving the device, during transmission, and when it reaches the target device. It can only be decrypted on your local device. Therefore, only you have permission to read the data (even bitwarden itself cannot decrypt and read it). [Open an encryption principle pit]
- Open-source code. One of the principles of modern password systems is that data security does not rely on encryption algorithms, but on keys. As long as the keys are not lost, the data is secure. All of bitwarden's algorithm source code is publicly available on bitwarden's code repository. Open-source code means that it is subject to everyone's supervision. In turn, community experts can also contribute code to bitwarden and fix bugs. In addition, all of bitwarden's source code is available for download. This means that if you want, you can deploy it on your own server.
- Strong community support. bitwarden operates a large official forum, Reddit forum, and GitHub community.
- Free
- The free features are already very powerful. Of course, you can also pay a small amount to get more secure protection. As of the time of writing this article, personal users can upgrade to the premium version for only $10/year. But it is also worth trying the free version for a period of time before deciding whether to purchase.
Why not choose LastPass?
You can refer to this link. In summary, it includes slow browser plugin performance, closed-source code, etc.
Why not choose the password management services built into Chrome or Edge?
They lack cross-browser support, have limited device compatibility, and are not as secure. You can further refer to this link and this link.
bitwarden User Guide
- Create an account and remember the master password.
- Enable two-step login in the account settings and securely save the recovery code.
- Install the browser extension/desktop client/mobile client from the official website. For Android users in China who do not have access to Google Play, you can try downloading from third-party app stores such as apkpure, but it may require some tricks.
- Generate secure passwords, including special symbols and removing confusing characters.
- Save passwords and use them across multiple devices.
Highlights of bitwarden Features
- Multiple domains with the same account may require adding custom rules in the account settings-domain rules (many rules are already preset).
- In addition to password management, bitwarden also provides a secure note storage service, where you can store confidential information such as identification numbers.
- Supports private deployment. Can be used with bitwarden or vaultwarden.