Change is hard. Change by yourself can seem impossible.

I used to be pretty unhealthy. More than 15 years ago, I was pre-diabetic and struggled with frequent back pain. I was a health disaster waiting to happen.

That changed when I joined a gym and started taking my health seriously. I ate better, got active and, most importantly, found others doing the same thing.

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Odds are that today you do not use a password manager. You may try to remember your credentials, have them written down, or use the same weak password to sign in everywhere.

According to a 2024 NordPass analysis of passwords stolen by malware or exposed in data breaches, the most common password in America is “secret.” It turned up more than 300,000 times in the data.

In terms of digital safety, if you don’t use a password manager you are a disaster waiting to happen.

Today. 

Yes, change is hard, but you do not have to travel the path alone. Follow along as I show you how to change your password habits and offer my help to make your new routine stick.

There are many reasons why people don’t use a tool to save their online account login information. Research conducted in 2019 by a team at Carnegie Mellon University outlined seven key causes:

• Not aware options available
• Confused by prompts to save passwords
• Baffled by options to remember passwords when signing in
• Believe they don’t have enough accounts to bother protecting
• Don’t know if they can trust a password tool
• Worried about storing all passwords in one place
• Prior negative experience with a password manager

Maybe one of those resonates with you. Perhaps you’ve tried to use a password manager and now you’ve got three or four scattered around your devices.

What matters is to commit to changing your password habits today and commit to it.

If you don’t have one already, open a free Bitwarden account here: https://bitwarden.com/go/start-free/.

For the reasons I outlined in this post, Bitwarden is your best option. You get complete on-device encryption with a tool which has never had a data breach and syncs seamlessly between browsers and devices.

When you enter your email and click “Sign up,” you’ll get a confirmation message in your inbox. 

Click “Verify email, then set up a strong password. This is super important as it will eventually be the single password you’ll use to protect all your logins.

According to Bitwarden, “A longer, more complex, and less common password is the best way to protect your account.” Your password must be no less than 12 characters, and it should be someting you use nowhere else.

My password is a series of words separated by spaces with some capital letters mixed in. It’s nothing tied to me or anything I do, and popped into my head when I first set up Bitwarden. It looks something like this:

“baobaB loll N@nkeen”

If you’re stumped, this Carnegie Mellon University article offers some great suggestions. Or contact me and we’ll figure it out together. 

Once you enter your new master password and confirm it, you’ll see a screen which looks like this:

Congratulations! 

You now have a password manager. Time to take it for a spin and see what it can do.

Once the account is set up, you need to prepare yourself to use it. All the tools you need are on this page. 

Add the browser extension to your laptop and/or desktop web browsers. Then install the app on your smartphone.

Once that is done, and you are signed in with your email address and master password, you are ready.

Set up your first login. This may seem like a lot, but it gets easier the more you do it.

I went to the New York Times Cooking website then clicked the login button, but you can pick any site. The experience will be very similar.

Under “Email Address,” you see the Bitwarden logo and a prompt to “+ New login.” Click “+ New login” and the following window will pop open:

Enter the email address you want to use for this login under “Username.” It can be any email not necessarily the one associated with your Bitwarden account.

Then you’ll create a password for the new login.

Do not type in a password. Instead, click the arrows to generate a new, random, very secure password for the site.

You can change the length of the generated password or revise some rules. For now, keep it simple.

Once you’re satisfied, select the “Use this password” button, then click the “Save” button in Bitwarden. Your credentials have been created and filled into the form.

Complete the website account setup, and you’ll be signed in.

The next time you want to sign in to the website, Bitwarden will remember you have a login for it.

Select it and log in.

That entire process may have taken between 15 minutes and an hour. It felt weird and unnatural. Just coming up with the master password alone may have felt like more than you could handle.

That’s normal. But you did it.

Now do it again. Take a few more minutes to sign in to another website you frequent. Save the login in Bitwarden. All of a sudden you have twice as many logins saved in a password manager than two-thirds of American adults.

You’re a verified Rock Star.

You are off to a great start, but there’s much work ahead. Here’s two ways to approach it:

1. Each day, create one new login in Bitwarden. Don’t lay your head on the pillow at night until you’ve done it. A login a day keeps the hackers away.
2. Think of the sites you access most frequently, and set up Bitwarden logins for each of them now. Reset their passwords to new, randomly generated ones.

Whichever method you choose, tell me how it went. I don’t want details, of course. How many logins did you save? Were these instructions clear or did I miss key information?

If you’ve read the previous posts in this series (one, two, three), I guided you through selecting and setting up a password manager. As you deliberately change your approach to online security, I can be the person you tell about it or maybe complain to if something goes wrong.

My driving desire is to help you. Once your logins and passwords are secure, you’ll be less likely to fall victim to identify theft and, should an emergency arise, you’ll be far better prepared to handle it.

Change is hard, but you’re not in it alone. 

Tell me how it went. I will be honored to be your personal technology guide.