I Have Too Many Passwords to Remember; What Can I Do?

It is no longer odd to hear someone complain that they have too many passwords to remember. Every day, we make use of the internet, and we are at constant alert to guard against harmful people on the internet. Hacking and identity theft have become more frequent in this part of the world, do therefore it is even more important to be at guard when it comes to our information stored online.

Our devices have become tools used to get around a lot of things in our daily lives, such as banking, socializing, schooling and a lot more. All of these require some form of security. Which is why before you gain access to most sensitive features on your device, you are requested to provide a password or a means of authentication to help the system verify that you are the one accessing these features. This helps protect your sensitive information from peering eyes.

But this entire process poses a challenge, or should we say that it “poses challenges”. These challenges make it difficult for people to further secure their devices, hence putting them in harm’s way or making these more prone to cyberattacks from “harmful fellows” on the internet. What are these challenges, and how do they affect us?

The Big Challenges With Passwords

Below is a run down of key challenges facing online security when it comes to passwords:

1. Complexity: If you have ever opened an account online, maybe a social media account, a Google account, a student account (for school purposes) or any kind of account, you will notice that the service provider will require you to create a password containing letters, numbers, signs and even uppercases to make the password a bit difficult for hackers to guess through a means called “brute force attack” by using this process hackers try to crack passwords by thinking of words or combinations that have hidden clues to the account owner. This entire act of making a password complex might be difficult and hard to remember.
2. Having numerous devices: Most internet users have more than one device, maybe multiple phones or a single phone and a laptop or a desktop or regular changing of your device. Whatever the case may be, this poses a challenge to password security.
3. Accessibility: Getting these passwords is an issue most of the time. We might forget our password, or we might need to access the account on another device and have to start sorting out our passwords from our main device. This can be very stressful and frustrating.
4. Human tendencies: This is one area that affects us all, because of how difficult we make these passwords we tend to forget them and might resort to changing them on the spot.
   

Having talked about all these challenges you might admit to some of them if not all, personally I have admitted to all and more, the big question now is “how can we solve it?”. The answer is pretty cool.

What To Do If You Have Too Many Passwords to Remember

To solve the problem of having multiple passwords to remember, Google was very kind to introduce a feature to Android, this feature helps save every single password of any service we access on the internet and whenever we open the website of the service provider and try to input our password Google automatically requests our permission to autofill the password into the space provided. This feature has helped to ease the stress that comes with password security. But there is an issue with this, the feature in itself is pretty effective on one device.

If you are an Android user, you will know or will have noticed that services on your Android device are being run using your Google account (Gmail account). The same applies to the password feature on Android: all your passwords are saved to your Google account. As such, if you try to access sites that you created passwords with on another device that your Google account is not signed in to, you will have to manually input your password. So a more effective solution is using third-party applications that focus on password security.

1. LastPass: This is a third-party application that helps you to saved your passwords and access them later on any other device that you choose. You can download the application here, and I will advise that you also download the LastPass authenticator app here, as it will further secure your LastPass login to prevent password compromise. This application saves all your passwords entered on your device and helps you to access them on any device that you save to your LastPass devices. The application can be used completely free on only one device but if you want to let more than one of your device have access to your LastPass then upgrading to the premium comes at just $3 per month (that is around 1500 Naira depending on the rates of your bank).
2. DashLane: Similarly to LastPass this application saves your passwords for future usage on your primary device or any other device that you register with it. But this has been my personal choice over LastPass for a few reasons, firstly being that it has a better user interface than LastPass, second is that you do not need to install a second application to have the 2-factor authenticator to work, as long as you are on a paid plan your two-factor authenticator works automatically. You can download it on PlayStore here. To gain access to more features, upgrading to a paid plan will work. You can pay for the essential plan at $2.5 per month or the premium at $4 per month. When it comes to pricing, LastPass is a better option.
3. Norton Password Manager: If you are already signed up to Norton 360 plan then paying for another password security manager would be a bad idea because Norton also offers a solution which is covered by the Norton 360 subscription. The application can be downloaded from the Google PlayStore app here.

There happens to be a lot of Password manager applications out there, but this is a list of the ones I have tried out and really liked. The important thing is that if you have too many passwords to remember, there is help available. Pick and use one of the above, or search out others that are available as well.

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Author: KittysTech