OK I'll bite ... why should I not use my browser's built in pw manager? (e.g. Safari on OS X Mavericks)
I can see an argument about cross-platform use but is there another reason or reasons?
thanks,
I can see an argument about cross-platform use but is there another reason or reasons?
thanks,
I suspect that the password manager in most browsers have received less attention than it deserves, partly because all the vendors been trying very hard to get people to drop passwords altogether. Mozilla pushed Persona, Google pushed Google accounts, Microsoft pushed Microsoft accounts. I wonder if Mozilla will start paying attention to the password manager now that it has given up on Persona.
LastPass et al. have a lot of additional features that make a lot of sense once you accept that you'll be stuck with dozens of passwords for the foreseeable future. For example, LastPass offers to generate a random password for each site, recognizes when you change your password, helps you organize websites into categories, and alerts you to weak passwords.
TL;DR Firefox with a strong master password was considered safe at the time of that article's writing (June 2013). That + Firefox Sync is what I use - I would also be interested in anything more up to date on why this is or isn't a good idea.
It is, however, the browser’s job to protect your passwords against other websites and the like, and I would be worried if there were bugs in that area, but your link doesn’t say anything about them (note also that using a password manager with an extension for protection against someone taking over the browser is useless, as that someone also owns the extension and hence can impersonate it towards the seperate password manager).