I was storing my passwords in a plain text file on my desktop for a full year

I was helping my friend set up a new laptop and he asked me to send him a password. When I opened my 'passwords.txt' file right there, he just stared and said, 'You know anyone who gets on your computer can just read that, right?' It hit me that my whole system was one malware infection away from giving everything away. I spent the next evening moving everything into Bitwarden instead. What's the best free password manager you guys have found?

3 comments

3 Comments

xena8861mo ago

Plain text is fine if you trust your own computer.

sethtorres10h ago

Watched my buddy lose a whole draft of his novel because a keylogger got on his laptop. He typed everything in a basic text file for months thinking it was safe. Turns out some malware was just quietly sending every keystroke to a server overseas. He only found out when his bank called about weird login attempts. That "trust your own computer" idea fell apart real fast.

hannah2401mo ago

Trust your own computer" is a wild take these days. Malware and remote access are real threats, so that trust is pretty thin. It's not just about someone sitting at your desk.