I finally stopped telling people to use a password manager after my cousin got locked out of his whole digital life in Austin.

He lost his master password and the recovery key, so now I suggest writing unique passwords on paper and keeping them in a safe place instead, which seems crazy but actually works.

4 comments

4 Comments

vera19513d agoMost Upvoted

What changed your mind? I was a huge password manager fan for years, but seeing my friend in a similar spot, locked out of her email for a week, really shook me. Now I keep the really important ones, like banking, written down at home. It feels backwards, but it's one less single point of failure.

emery29013d ago

Yeah, the "single point of failure" thing is real. I got locked out of my manager once after a phone died and my backup code was in the wrong drawer. @the_thomas has a point about paper risks, but my mortgage login is now on a sticky note in a cookbook. Feels dumb, but it works.

evan_cooper733d ago

Watched my brother lose his whole digital life, so my master password is now taped inside a filing cabinet.

the_thomas13d ago

Paper can burn or get lost just as easy. A good manager with a cloud backup you actually remember is still way more Secure for most folks.