Password managers with warnings – background

If there’s one security tip that I hope you’ve followed over the years, it’s that you must use a unique password. The reason is now known: the biggest risk when an account is hacked is that the password ends up in dumps of data that can now be bought online for a few euros and are used by criminals to Sprinkler attack. The password you use for the local butcher’s web shop Het Weaned Varken is also used for more important accounts, et al: You suddenly have a bigger problem than anyone seeing how many pork chops you bought in the last year.

Password manager is the ideal way to manage various passwords. It is sometimes difficult for users to choose a password manager, but this has become easier in recent years due to an important development: password managers in the browser. It is rudimentary, but it is free and easily available. In recent weeks, the largest browsers have been given additional functionality. Google, Microsoft and Mozilla not only help users manage their passwords, but they also warn them if they use passwords known to be stolen. This is tricky, because they have to store the login data and you obviously don’t want to do this in plain text. Therefore, “symmetric encryption” is used, which is a process by which sets of encrypted data can be compared with each other. These functions are now in Chrome and Edge. Mozilla has been using a different app for a few years now. But whatever it is used for, it makes managing passwords a little more secure.