Step 01 — Password Manager
What is it?
A password manager is exactly what it sounds like — a tool to store and manage your passwords to make it easier to keep track of all the different accounts you need to log into these days. Instead of remembering all your passwords (and usernames) you just remember one master password that logs you into your password manager. They also have some features (like browser extensions) that make it much faster and simpler to log into accounts.
Why does it matter?
This step in the action plan might not be obvious why its related to your personal sovereignty, and indeed, it’s NOT directly related. However, a crucial tool that you will need through this plan is a password manager to keep things organized.
You will be changing a lot of habits further in the list that will involved shutting down old accounts and opening some new ones. Furthermore, you will change the way you sign up for accounts (we’ll get to that later in the list) and a password manager is an essential tool. So while it’s not directly related to your privacy, you’ll need it to manage your progress in the SAP.
How to do it
It’s relatively easy to create an account for a password manager. While there are many good ones out there, we recommend either Bitwarden or Keepass. They are both open source and it’s highly unlikely there is anything nefarious hiding in these apps. Bitwarden is cloud-based which means your account is saved online and can be accessed through a browser (but you can download both a desktop and mobile apps if desired).
The most convenient way in my opinion is downloading the extension from either the chrome store (note: chrome extensions are also available on Brave) or as an add-on from the mozilla firefox store. Bitwarden is completely free but there is a paid version if you want some extra bells and whistles.
Keepass is not a cloud-based tool and for that reason some people feel more comfortable with it. The downside is that you need to take responsibility for your password file and if you lose it and you don’t have it backed up, you could be in real trouble. You also have the option up backing up your Keepass database with a cloud storage tool like dropbox but that defeats the purpose of going with a non-cloud-based tool. Keepass is also not quite as user-friendly as Bitwarden.
IMPORTANT When you create you’re account, make sure you turn on 2-factor authentication. If someone somehow gets ahold of your master password, you want a second line of defense so they can’t access all your passwords.