Passwords on Many Devices - How?

Last pass will ensure your passwords are available on many devices. Including a lot you don't own.

Personally Google password manager works for me, its native in chrome and android. apple key chain or what ever they call it may be better if you're an apple-ist.

Also don't forget, one online copy is not the answer whatever you use, take a physical backup every now and then and keep it offline eg a usb stick or even a paper print out.

I don't know about the smart TVs as I don't use one, but for everything else you can either use the Chrome browser on all of them, and let Google sync keep them all in line, or use a password manager that uses cloud storage for its password database. I use KeePass and keep the database file on Google Drive.

I use the Google one that is built into Chrome and works across different devices. It's straightforward if you are logged into a single Google account on all your different laptops and phones.

The one thing you may struggle with is your wife using the same password/account details, there's no way to synchronise just a few passwords on different accounts. For this you'll have to manually enter the details once and ask Google to remember it. If the password is changed in future, same process to update the second account.

One Password with private vaults for you and Mrs johncoventry and a shared one for all the stuff like wifi at home and tv streaming logins. This would be all on the one account.

EDIT Apparently the AI things online can easily break passwords under 18 characters long in a reasonable time-frame. Make sure anything important is secured with a long random password.

Does Safari on Windows allow you to use your iCloud saved passwords? If so, that's what I'd do. Synced tabs / bookmarks between devices is useful, too.

As a fully paid-up Apple-ista, I just use their thing and it syncs beautifully between my (Mac) laptop / (i) phone so I never have to remember passwords. But since you're not in that boat, I think there are other services that are platform-agnostic, though. It might be worth checking whether your work laptop has any restrictions on what you can install?

Thanks for the suggestions. I will do some more reading.

How will the Google one built into Chrome cope with apps which I dont access through a browser?

wouldnt touch lastpass with a bitty stick.
chrome signed into a google account work for me.

Does Safari on Windows allow you to use your iCloud saved passwords?

Safari doesn’t exist for windows anymore.

There’s a Keychain plug in for Chrome which is what I use.

Last pass will ensure your passwords are available on many devices.

Yeah, like shared with half of the internet. Don't use Last Pass – just Google the recent breaches to see why! 1Password is what we use in our organisation now.

How will the Google one built into Chrome cope with apps which I dont access through a browser?

Unless iPhone works very different to Android you either don't sign into apps once your phone is unlocked, or if extra security is needed like a banking app its phone pin number or fingerprint so this isn't really an issue.

Or have I got the wrong end of the stick here?

Yeah, like shared with half of the internet. Don’t use Last Pass

There's a reason it read

Last pass will ensure your passwords are available on many devices. Including a lot you don’t own.

There's an extension for MS Edge which allows you to use your iphone stored passwords on your windows laptop etc.

It works well. Sometimes the sites and apps themselves are a bit clunky and require a bit of copy and paste action but nothing too onerous. It can take a while going through everything systematically and changign your duplicated passwords but start with your bank and phone ones.

I like bitwarden - does all the good stuff that lastpass did, but not the spreading your passwords all over the darkweb bit.

Also have a look at the paid version of Bitwarden.

We use Norton 360 here, and use their bundled password vault on computers and phones. One vault w same password for me and mrs epic. Not completely ideal, but does mean i can use her Amazon

I don't think Norton have had any hacks have they?

What is your favourite song? Use a line from that to create a long password. Long passwords = better passwords. Use different lines or songs for different sites. Mix up some special chars and numbers if you want but length is important.

I do use KeePass as well to keep track of randomly generated ones.

Bit warden here, I have two accounts that talk to each other so that if I change the master password then get interrupted by a phonecall and then by someone just chatting pointlessly by my desk I don't go to log in and find I've forgotten the new password and lost access to something like 150 passwords... Because that did happen.

Tried a few of these, always used to use Google Chrome password manager but that limits you to browser based passwords (unless you're on Android).

Then moved to Microsoft Authenticator/Edge for passwords and 2FA to reduce the number of apps I needed. Then went to Dashlane around the same time I got an iPhone, but found the autofill to be inconsistent.

Now on 1Password and finding it to be absolutely perfect. Paid app only though, but then I do appreciate the extra features that brings like 'Watchtower' and dark web data breach warnings powered by haveibeenpwned etc.

If you want something that's pretty much 95% as good as 1Password but free (and open source) then BitWarden is a good shout. And even if you do fancy a paid version, it's about 1/3 of the price of 1Password.

I now use 1Password for everything, including 2FA. Because the reality is that the 'threat model' of most people doesn't warrant a separate service for 2FA.

And technically, unless the device you use for 2FA is completely standalone from the one the passwords are on (like a Yubikey or similar), then it's not actually 2FA anyway!

What is your favourite song? Use a line from that to create a long password. Long passwords = better passwords

Except when they’re in easily accessible publicly available places all over the internet ffs….

Three random words/phrases.
Parkedlikea****dogshittinglampost is a very good password made up as I looked out of the train window right now and I’ll likely never forget it. Of course the correct answer is to use a password manager and randoms

I spent sometime last night playing around with Google password manager as it seems to be the most popular.

Can it generate passwords to replace existing passwords?
I couldnt see how to do it.

Not really: as far I know you go to the site, change password and it updates.

Go to site on Chrome, select change password and Chrome should then ask if you want to choose a new secure password, which it provides.

I know that my iphone suggests strong passwords with lots of random characters but how will I remember the password and enter it on other devices?

Bit warden password manager for me. 4 random word as passwords, if the site will allow it

What annoys me is android apps that forget passwords because these aren't stored in Chrome. Nectar card I'm looking at you.