Do you remember big hacks and leaks like the one where nude pictures of celebrities were leaked from iCloud? Hacking is most of the time nothing more (and nothing less) than just figuring out a Password. No encryption in the world can protect your valuable data if your password is easy to guess. Imagine a house: Even if you lock your door with the safest lock in the world, your belongings are still not safe if you leave your key in the backyard. It’s even worse, many people don’t just use weak passwords, but they reuse them on multiple platforms.

The 2012 LinkedIn breach dump has been a hacker gold mine for years, with news items still cropping up in 2018 about individuals and businesses who didn’t change their LinkedIn passwords after the breach and then had other accounts hijacked. When an online service suffers a data breach – as happened to eHarmony, LinkedIn, and Yahoo – there’s a risk that an intruder will discover your password and gain access to your account. That danger is multiplied if the compromised password has been used across multiple sites.

Let’s face it, for most people, it’s not possible to memorize dozens of passwords each 30+ characters long. That’s why smart people have come up with a solution: password Manager. A password manager is an encrypted database that stores all your passwords. The only password you have to memorize is the password to unlock the database. Quickly, the question arises „are password managers really safe?“ The short answer is: Yes, they’re safer than reusing passwords or using weak passwords. However, no solution is 100% secure, and security always depends on the attacker model; passwords are terrible against-mind readers!

Why password managers are safe

It’s been argued that using a password manager is “putting all your security eggs in one basket”. This is somewhat true, but reusing passwords is no different. However, the encryption of the password database is ridiculously safe, and without the password, there is no access. Good services also offer two-factor authentication to make it even harder for any hacker to get access.

Security advantages of a password manager:

• Passwords are safely encrypted
• Very long and complex passwords may be chosen
• Different passwords for each service may be used
• Good password managers allow you to use two-factor authentication both to access your password database and other services
• Depending on the service, the database is synchronized between devices and backed up

It goes to show that even the most reputable password manager, like any other company, can have problems. Most of the notable ones like LastPass, 1Passwords, … have had bugs in the past. However, despite issues of bugs and a market flooded with good and bad choices, security experts agree—a rarity—that password managers are the safest way for people to manage their accounts. The security benefits far outweigh the risks.

Note that a browser does not qualify as a password manager. Don’t let it handle your passwords. That’s why SnowHaze supports third party password managers to give the user a seamless and safe possibility to access passwords.