The Digital Seatbelt: Why a password manager is a must have for online safety
You wouldn’t get into a car without using a seat belt.
Why aren’t you using a password manager?

In 1983, only 14% of Americans used seat belts. Forty-one years later, 92% of us use them because they save lives.
Password managers do exactly the same thing for our digital lives. Odds are, though, the next time you’re prompted to create a new digital account or sign in to an existing one, you will not use a password manager.
More adults claim they memorize passwords – 51% – than turn to a password manager, 36%.
Given the proliferation of data breaches and online scams, not using a password manager is akin to driving a car without fastening the seatbelt. Although you’re willfully throwing reason out the window and hoping for the best, we can work together to find a better way.
So what?
Yes, I am painting a bleak picture. That’s intentional, but don’t just take my word for it.
Security.org conducted a survey on digital security in October 2024. Of the 1,000 respondents, 17% of them who did use a password manager had been victimized by identity theft in the prior 12 months. For respondents who did not use a password manager, that number almost doubled to 32%.
People who used a password manager were almost 50% less likely to suffer identify theft.
Why do scammers and hackers continue to plague us? Because two-third of us refuse to use a simple piece of technology designed to foil them and keep our bank accounts and personal information safe.
Blood on the highway
The April 2024 Roku hack was a prime example of this blithe ignorance.
Roku notified users that almost 600,000 of their accounts had been accessed by hackers using credentials, “taken from another source, like another online account, where the affected users may have used the same credentials.” That’s called a credential stuffing attack:
“Since many users will re-use the same password and username/email, when those credentials are exposed (by a database breach or phishing attack, for example) submitting those sets of stolen credentials into dozens or hundreds of other sites can allow an attacker to compromise those accounts too.”
Because, according to the Security.org study, 18% of American adults use the same passwords on all their accounts, credential stuffing is, “one of the most common techniques used to take-over user accounts.”
It doesn’t have to be this way. Not only are we smarter than our smartphones, we can also hack the hackers.
You can begin today with a few simple steps.
First Step
Over the next seven days, observe your online behavior. Take note of, roughly, the number of times you need to sign in to both websites and apps each day.
The goal of this exercise is to get a sense of what might be the most effective solution for you.
Google and Apple both bake password managers into their Chrome and Safari browsers. If everything you do online happens in a browser, they might be the best choice for you.
I don’t think that will be true for most, but figuring it out is a solid place to start.
Second Step
Sign up to get an email when I post the next article in this series. It’s a double opt-in process, so you’ll need to confirm with a second click from your inbox, but it will be worth it.
Over the next several posts, I’ll help you figure out which password manager is best for you, step through how to begin using it, then show you how to extend its utility into areas of your digital life you probably hadn’t considered.
Next Step
Observe your online activity.
Take note of where you’re needing to sign in and how often.
Sign up for the next post, or come back next week.
Then, working together, we’ll hack the hackers.
Note: If you’re curious, yes, I do use a password manager and have for years. I’ll share which one and why in an upcoming post.
3 Comments
Ann Leiner · December 31, 2024 at 00:11
I’ll play along! I currently use one and would love to know how it ranks according to your research. 🙂
Dan · December 31, 2024 at 08:21
Which one do you use?
The plan now isn’t to rank password managers but to advocate for more people to use them then demonstrate how to start while sharing some tips for ways to extend their utility.
Start thinking about a password manager: features and functionality – My Journey · January 6, 2025 at 08:14
[…] Years ago, I managed a campaign for a state house candidate. We’ve stayed in touch, and I was talking with him recently about my first password manager post. […]
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