Until 2 years ago I was a total mess at online security. I always used a short and easy to remember the password for every single site. Same login and same password. I didn’t know anything about how they were stored back then. Around that time I heard about the play station network leak and all the damage it causes. I finally realized that it could have happened to me. This sense of unease got worse when I read a post on a tech blog of a blogger who lost all his photos because someone broke into his iCloud account and erased his HDD.
I finally decided to buy a password manager and went through all my most important logins and changed them to a randomly generated password. I’ve been in relative peace from that moment on.
After the lengthy setup process logging in to websites is actually easier. Your credentials will get auto-filled with a single click (or keypress).
Next steps
Once you feel comfortable with using a password manager you can start using 2-factor authentication as well. Don’t rush it though. Already switching from not using to using a password manager is a big change and too much if it too quickly would just make you go back to the start.
I’m going to talk about two-factor authentication in the next installment.