How do you feel about password managers?

Which one do you use and would you recommend it? I'm thinking about using one but I don't know which one to choose. I almost went with last password but I don't know if I like the idea of the passwords being encrypted on their servers. I'd like it to be offline or even on a usb stick or something.

Any of you guys have any experience with this stuff?

Someone here recommended LastPass to me and it was the best decision I ever made. I went ahead paid the $12/yr to have it on my phone.

The thing is with LastPass is they did the security correctly. It's encrypted, but they don't store your password. Your password just ends up being the "key" you need to unlock your file. When you change your password, they re-encrypt your database file. The browser add-on alone makes it worth it.

hmmm. Maybe I'll reconsider it then. Did you let it grab all of your passwords and then delete them from where they found'em? I was too scare to make that jump and just deleted the account at that point.

Seconding LastPass. Generating, saving, and recalling passwords is hassle-free on most browsers and the only gap in security is your own damn self.

Norton 360 added a password locker recently.

It's life changing.

@jams: I didn't let it grab anything because I never save passwords in the browser. Not since I found out Firefox way back in the day (2.0?) saved them as a file and anyone with access to that file could replace theirs with yours and log into your accounts.

You tell it what to save. When you log into an account, there is a little notification above the page asking you if you want LastPass to save the account info or not. If you really want the local file option, you could use KeePass which is what I used before I swapped. There were times where I was travelling that I may not have been able to launch it, but still needed access to my random generated passwords which is why I went the paid option to get LastPass on my phone.

And AOL gives you 4000 free hours. People still use Norton?

As someone who has intimate experience with Norton products and the Symantec corporation, fuck everything about Norton. The password locker is a cheaply-made, insecure value-add to trick people into signing up for a subscription they will be billed for regardless of their cancellation.

;_; Norton gets pretty good reviews you guys.

Don't make me feel bad for my choice in anti-virus.

I've been using 1Password for about a year and a half. The browser plugin allows me to hit a key combo to log in, as well as fill in personal and financial information on store pages, on request.

I was against password managers but after reading about how easy it is to crack passwords these days (on Arstechnica) it seems almost a must.

I started using KeyPass 2...it stores passwords but you can use it to create random passwords (which is customizable) and I really like that feature.

I'm thinking of going with KeePass (OSS zealotry showing through maybe?) Lock the database with a password and a private key file. Database goes in Dropbox and say another storage provider. For when I'm not at one of my own computers the key file goes on a USB keychain and my work PC which is backed up and accessible over VPN in a pinch. Still have some thinking to do about it.

I've certainly heard great things about LastPass but when I have the option to go with something free and open where I can read the source myself... I know what I'm going to choose.

I'm smart enough and have good enough memory that anything important i can remember.

So i don't need them. My important email and steam and such are all locked down with authenticators via phones and such. So yeah. I'm not worried about it.

Dont listen to nay sayers, Norton is one of the best paid anti-virus services.

As for password managers I have been using lastpass for over 2 years now and wont be leaving anytime soon. One feature some people haven't mentioned with lasspass is you can do integrity checks on your various accounts. It will detect any vulnerabilities you have, like duplicate passwords, and help you fix them. This was good for me because I came in with about 4 very safe passwords(13+ characters, upper/lower/special characters) that I used on over 20 accounts. It helped me get rid of the duplicates and create new unique passwords for all my accounts.

I don't know. Norton may be better now, but once Norton and McAfee became nothing but bloated system hogs, I stopped using them. I especially enjoyed their bullshit from the XP days of not being able to even uninstall the damn things or deciding to make your PC crawl once the subscription was over. Fuck Norton and fuck McAfee. I don't know what it is about Anti-Virus software, but once they start getting good reviews and doing really well, they become shit. Avast used to be really good, but now it is just an annoyance with its ads; same with AVG back in the day.