Today we’re going to deal with an issue that I’m sure many of us run into on a daily basis: managing passwords. Given that you probably use a bajillion different services, each of which has its own password requirement, and given that UMass makes you change your password once a year, you probably have trouble keeping them all straight. Luckily for you, there is a tool you can use to keep your passwords tracked!
For these tools, you can use one super strong password to keep all your other passwords safe, easily searchable, and all in one place. They can often be used to automatically fill in login info on the web.
There are many password managers out there. You can find reviews of them simply by googling “password manager.” The ones I am going to mention here are the default chrome password manager, and Lastpass.
The first and easiest one, Google Smart Lock is so ubiquitous that you’ve probably been using it all along! Any time your google chrome asks you to “save” a password, it gets stored in Google Smart Lock. If you want to see your passwords, or manually add new ones, simply go to “passwords.google.com” and log in with your (non UMass) Google account. Voila! You can see all of the passwords that you have saved while using Chrome.
What about if you aren’t a Chrome user? Or maybe you don’t like the idea of Google storing your data… What can you do?
You can use a manager like LastPass. This browser extension/mobile app can also keep your passwords safe and encrypted. You can even set up 2 factor authentication (so that you would have to have 2 devices on you to be able to see your saved passwords). You can find more information here: https://www.lastpass.com/how-it-works but it works in essentially the same way as Google Last Pass. You can save passwords, add new passwords, automatically fill out forms, etc.
So get one of these managers, and never worry about forgetting your many many passwords again!