Finally ditched my password manager for a physical security key setup

I spent like 2 years using LastPass and honestly it was fine until that big breach back in 2022. After that I switched to Bitwarden which was better but I still felt paranoid every time I logged into my bank. Then last month I grabbed a YubiKey 5 NFC for $45 and started using it for my main accounts like Google and email. The difference is huge because now I physically have to tap the key to log in and no hacker halfway across the world can steal that. I also set up a backup key and stored it in my safe so I am not locked out if the first one breaks. Took me about 3 hours to get everything configured but now I sleep way better at night. Has anyone else made the jump from a password manager to hardware keys and noticed a real difference?

2 comments

2 Comments

palmer.henry22d ago

Oh man I love that you said "3 hours to configure" because mine took me like a whole weekend and I still locked myself out of my Netflix account somehow. I felt like a wizard setting up the Yubikey but then I realized I had to actually remember which accounts used the NFC vs the USB slot and I just ended up tapping the key against my phone screen like a dork for 20 minutes before I figured it out. Honestly though the peace of mind is real, even if I looked like an absolute goober waving this little plastic key at my laptop every morning.

spencer_johnson2222d ago

Wait, you locked yourself out of Netflix with a Yubikey too? I thought I was the only one who managed to brick their streaming service after going full security nerd. My big mistake was I set it up on my phone first (thinking NFC was the way to go) but then tried to use it on my laptop the next day with the USB-A slot and got hit with that dreaded "invalid credential" error like five times in a row. And dont even get me started on the PIN thing - I kept typing my work computer password into the Yubikey manager and wondering why it kept rejecting me. But yeah, the peace of mind is totally worth the dumb moments. I still catch myself tapping it on my desk sometimes just to make sure it works.