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Ready to get started? There are two ways to begin your password manager journey with mypassword.care:

  1. Submit a ticket at https://universitypccare.support in the Mypassword.care department if you are starting from scratch and you are not part of an organization that has already signed up for service. We will help you get your account created and billing configured.
  2. Register with your organization email address if you are part of an organization that has already registered for service. For example, any user of "Example Inc", whose email ends with @example.com, can register as part of their organization.

Choose a strong, unique master password

Your "master password" is the one password that will get you into your password manager and, therefore, give you access to all your stored passwords. This master password must be unique and strong. The key to a good master password is something that is memorable to you, yet "unguessable" to anyone else. Before looking at some strong examples of creating a master password, let's look at some passwords that aren't strong:

  • Anything that you've ever used somewhere else before: Password reuse means that a compromise in one location could lead to compromises in other locations. Avoid this by creating something unique.
  • Letter substitution: Swapping an "S" for a "5", for example, seems strong but is one of the many variations tested by password cracking tools. "P455w0rd" is just as strong as "Password" - which is to say, not at all. Some letter substitution is fine, but it shouldn't be the only security measure in your password.
  • Patterns: If you ever worked at a company that made you change your password on a time schedule, you might be familiar with "just add 1" or "use the current year" as common patterns for making your new password. Or, maybe you've used the site name as part of your password pattern - like "Amazon2024" or "Facebook2024". Avoid this! Simple patterns like this are easy to guess once one example of your pattern has been compromised.
  • A completely random password: While this would be the ultimate secure password, it almost guarantees that you will need to keep a copy of your password written down somewhere nearby. You should be able to type your password from memory. Being forced to rely on a written down password could leave you locked out if that written password is ever lost, damaged, or stolen!

So what does make a strong password? Strong passwords are:

  1. Unique to you
  2. Easily memorable - but only to you
  3. Hard to guess - both for people that know you and for automated computer systems
  4. Long - password strength is directly correlated to the length of the password

Notice that "complex" is not on that list - complex passwords are often harder for you to remember and type, which can lead to you simply writing it down on a sticky note and attaching it to your monitor, which is not secure! The complexity in a password should come from the length and its uniqueness to you.

There are many valid ways to come up with a secure password. One particularly strong and memorable method is to use a "passphrase" instead. Passphrases are commonly 4 or more random words strung together (like correct-horse-battery-stapler). Due to the sheer length of the passphrase, they are practically "unhackable" by modern standards. Importantly for you, however, is that you only need to remember 4 words instead of (in this example) 29 letters.

Here is our preferred passphrase generator: https://www.useapassphrase.com/

We also recommend browsing the brief documentation that page to get an idea on the relative strength of a passphrase vs a password.

Don't get locked out

So you've come up with your strong master password - now what? We recommend writing this down on a piece of paper (or printing it) and storing it in a safe, secure location - like a safe. This is your backup option in case you forget your password one day. It needs to be accessible, but not so accessible that it's insecure. Don't store your password backup on a sticky note on your monitor or on a piece of paper in your desk! Rather, store it in a safe, or in something like an envelope or folder (for protection) in a secure location.

You cannot recover your password vault if you forget your master password. This is due to the nature of a password manager, which encrypts your password vault with your master password so it is inaccessible to everyone except for you.

Login

After your account is successfully created, you can login from the web at https://mypassword.care with your registered email and password.

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