Hot take: I stopped using a password manager for a week and it was a disaster

I thought I could just remember a few strong passwords for my main accounts, but after locking myself out of my bank's website on a Tuesday, I had to admit defeat. The 'trick' of using a memorable phrase with numbers and symbols just doesn't scale past three logins. Anyone else tried to go password-manager-free and regretted it?

2 comments

2 Comments

hart.zara13d ago

My cousin tried the same thing last year and it backfired in the worst way. He used a "strong" base password and just changed the last two letters for each site. Someone hacked his old gaming forum account, figured out the pattern, and got into his email. It took him months to clean that up. Password managers seem like a hassle until you realize how bad the other options are.

karen36813d ago

Yeah, the part about the pattern getting hacked is exactly why I gave up. I used to think managers were overkill for normal people. Then I saw a friend get wrecked by something similar to what hart.zara described. It's not about remembering one good password, it's about every single account needing its own totally different one. A manager is just the only thing that actually works for that.