This short guide is a reference tool to help refresh your knowledge or practise what you have learned in the Managing passwords online course, including:
You create passwords to secure your various online accounts. These need to be strong and secure, so others cannot access your information.
A weak password is easy to guess. It might use numbers in order (12345), and common words such as mypassword, cheetah, librarian, and similar.
A strong password is hard to guess. It has random uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols such as !@#$%^&*.
A computer-generated password, usually made by your web browser, has a random string of numbers, letters, and symbols.
A computer-generated password is the safest kind of password, because it is so random. It is virtually impossible for a human to guess, and very difficult for a computer to hack.
When you go to a website, your browser will provide the password for you, so you don’t have to remember it. Your browser passwords only work with the browser you saved them in. You can use this browser on multiple devices, though.
You can view and change passwords using your web browser’s password feature:
Remembering lots of passwords is difficult, and you might want to use them on different browsers and computers. That’s where a password manager can help.
There are two main kinds of password manager.
A password manager is like a traditional keychain, with each key unlocking a different app or website.
Your passwords are protected by a master password which you use to sign in to your password manager. The password is not computer generated – you create it.
Each time a website asks for a password, you sign in with your master password and the password manager then enters the password in to the website for you.
Your password manager can also:
Your passwords are saved in the cloud, to keep them safe. The master password is not saved in the cloud – you need to remember it.
Modern web browsers such as Chrome, Edge, and Safari include a free password manager. This is more limited than a separate password manager app, because it remembers passwords only for that browser. An app can manage passwords on all your devices, whatever browser you use.
Some password manager apps ask for a small monthly subscription fee, to give you extra features and support. A paid password manager costs $6-12 a month, and you install it on all your devices from each device’s app store.
If you stop paying for your password manager, you will lose access to extra features, but not your passwords.
Once you have downloaded your chosen password manager app from the official app store for your device:
Once you have activated your password manager, it will:
A paid password manager may also provide some or all of the following features:
If you decide to share some or all of your passwords with another person, they will only be able to use passwords that don’t have extra security in the form of multifactor authentication. So, they won’t be able to access such sites as my.gov.au, unless you can show them the code MyGov sends to your mobile phone.
By default, the dashboard in your password manager keeps passwords secret and only shows black dots for each one. You can, however, view or change your saved passwords from the dashboard.
Click on the eye symbol next to a password to turn it from dots into the password itself. The password will hide itself again automatically when you close the dashboard.
You can enable the password manager’s alert feature to get notifications about compromised passwords sent to your email address or mobile number.
If one or more of your passwords is exposed online somehow, your password manager will send you an email or text message about this.