Password keeper

How it works

You remember one master secret. The keeper uses it to unlock a file or a vault of site names, usernames, and passwords. While the keeper is locked, that list is not a plain note on the desktop. While it is unlocked on a device you control, you can copy a login or let a filler type it into a page that matches the saved address. Lock it when you walk away. An open keeper on a shared desk is a lockbox with the lid up.

The useful habit is uniqueness. When you register somewhere new, let the keeper invent a long string, save it against the real domain, and stop inventing clever variants of an old phrase. A reused phrase turns one leak into many. A unique string contains a breach at that one site. The keeper is a tool for that habit. It is not a personality upgrade, and it is not a substitute for a second factor on accounts that offer one.

Some keepers live in a browser profile. Some are separate apps that sync an encrypted vault between a phone and a computer. Sync is a convenience and a new copy of the locked file. The vendor’s claim that they cannot read the vault is only as good as the product’s design and the master secret you chose. A short master phrase built from a name and a year is a weak key no matter how serious the app’s icon looks.

What belongs in the lockbox

Logins belong there. Recovery codes for two-factor tools belong there if you would otherwise lose them in a screenshot album. Notes that are actually secrets belong there. A shopping list does not. Treat the keeper like a small safe, not like a second inbox. Save the entry to the real host. A look-alike page with a slightly different spelling is still a trap even when the password itself is unique and long. A filler that refuses to type on the wrong host is doing its job.

One master secret you can remember and that is not reused as a site login. A generated string per site, stored against the real domain. Recovery codes in the same keeper, not in a photo roll. A recovery path the product documents — a printed key, a second device — tested once while you still can.

A lock when you leave the machine. Export is a quiet edge. An unencrypted export is a list. If you leave a product, move the entries into the next keeper and then change the accounts that matter. A forgotten keeper with a forgotten master secret is a closed box with no spare key. That is a feature until the day it is your box. Test the spare key while the box still opens.

What a keeper will not fix

It will not repair a site that stored your unique password badly. You change that one entry. You do not have to change every other entry, which is the point of uniqueness. It will not survive a master secret typed into a fake unlock screen. It will not survive a computer that already records keystrokes. It will not make a shared family tablet into a private office. If other people sit down at the machine, lock the keeper. If you must share one or two logins on purpose, use the sharing feature the product documents, not a text message of the password.

A keeper that remembers twenty secrets is useful. A head that insists on remembering twenty secrets is still in the reuse business. Do not paste a live password into a random “strength” page on the way to lunch. The keeper already has the string. Scoring it in a stranger’s form creates another copy. Dummy strings are for testers. Live logins are for the keeper and for the site they belong to, typed by the filler, not by a form you cannot explain.