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Comment by bobajeff | Hacker News Reader

I don't think there is any good reason to store passwords on a remote machine that you don't own. When most passwords that anyone will ever have can be fit on one cheap thumb drive in a keepass database. For which there are many open source apps available.

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Ease of use is the biggest one. While you and I are capable of setting up and keeping up a remote machine with a self-hosted password manager, I'm incredibly confident my barely tech literate parents are. Realistically for people that aren't savvy enough to set up their own thing it's a e2ee password manager using that password manager's remote service or them using the same password for multiple websites and more of a lesser of two evils.

That makes sense. However, it's not that different from using the same password on all sites as an attacker only needs the master key for your online password manager.

It's very different. Even if I gave you my master password, you wouldn't be able to get into my account. The password manager I use has MFA (and I don't mean 2FA).

I generally agree, but it also depends on who you are. Although I don't have direct experience with this yet, I can imagine it's better for people who are not tech savvy or are prone to devices getting broken or lost.

As a programmer, I've yet to have needed a password manager. My passwords are random word combos that are somewhat memorable and I have 2FA setup for most things. If I forget a password, I rely on the "forgot my password" flow, and just accept that as the occasional tradeoff for not having a password live anywhere specifically. For some sites that don't have 2FA, I rely solely on logging in via the "forgot my password" flow.

Far as I can tell, I haven't been pwned.

I share a password manager with my spouse. There’s no way she would use it if it didn’t have a good mobile app.

Main reason is ease of access in phone. Bitwarden + Vaultwarden is great and syncs everywhere. Can't do that with keepass. I can't even open the keepass db from the usb stick on an iPhone.

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