I’m new to these password managers and confused as to how they work.
When entering login information for a website, do I enter my current password or have a random complex password created by Bitwarden and then go to each of the sites and physically change the passwords to match that which is stored in Bitwarden or similar?
Example - lets say my Gmail password is abc123.
Do I add a new entry in Bitwarden and for eases sake create a random password of 18 characters and then login to gmail and physically change my current password to the new one created and stored in Bitwarden?
If this is how it works, it’s laborious and quite unnecessary if it’s literally just a secure app to store information.
There’s plenty of secure apps to do this if it’s just a repository of passwords/login data.
Or am I missing something here with regard to how Bitwarden can automate my sign in credentials using passwords that are much more secure? For example, does Bitwarden use my old password to access my gmail (just an example site) and then change the password to the more complex one created and stored in the Bitwarden vault?
Sorry, I have tried to read the literature but I just can’t find this.
It is exactly how you said first, it is storing “only” the secure information. And auto fill the login fields if you want that.
It is not changing the password for you on a target site like gmail, i guess, none of the password managers is doing that.
Right, there are many tools they can store secure informations, but there arent a lot tools with bitwarden features:
available on most platforms
Host on own servers if you want (most modern managers are only cloud based)
Sync over all platforms, mobile,tablet,mac,windows,linux
2nd factor to secure logins, TOTP, Yubikey and others
it checks your passwords if they are weak, several times used, etc
share passwords with your family, team or company, make sure they only can see what you want they should see.
Personally I think Bitwarden is much better than LastPass… but LastPass does have a one-click “change all my passwords to random new ones” button that works with a few large sites (gmail, facebook, etc.)
It would make password managers so much better if all websites in the world made a standard way of changing the password.
There’s Keepass2Android also which seems like a good option.
I think having locally stored is best - cloud storage is nice, but it just adds another layer of potential infiltration.
That is the nice thing in a free market, you can choose what you fits you best
Keepass is for sure a very good password manager but as you said it´s only local stored. So in my case it´s way more complicated to hold the files (on desktop and mobile) in sync. That´s one the most important reason for me choose bitwarden.
