You store your password file in dropbox or Google Drive or something like that. I use drop box, even if my computer and phone both implode, it is still sitting there safe. This also means that all of your passwords update. If I make a change from my computer, but phone picks up the change. I also have my password file on a USB key. That one gets updated only occasionally when I get around to updating it, but that serves as an ultimate backup in case my phone, my computer, and dropbox all decide to die at once.
with the recent revelations of tech companies assisting NSA etc, why would you store passwords online? I know that there are people who “have nothing to hide”, but that defeats the purpose of passwords. No?
The password file itself is encrypted if you use a password manager like Keepass.
The password file sitting online is encrypted with very strong encryption. Is it strong enough to ward off the NSA if they decide that they want to break into your passwords? Probably not, though it might actually be. One of the things the Snowden leaks showed us was that, for the most part, strong encryption really is hard for the NSA to break. Unless you do something to make the NSA so upset that they spend a significant portion of their codebreaking computing power to go after you personally, you are probably okay, and if they are that interested in you, you are already fucked regardless of what you do.
The point really is to ward off casual attacks. Most attacks are attacks of opportunity. The single most likely way for your shit to get hacked is for a site with bad security to get hacked, and the hackers getting your e-mail and password. Once they have they can try that e-mail and password on everything. That is, by far, your greatest weakness. If I had to pick between using a single strong 20 character password for everything, or a bad 5 character password that is different for everything, the bad password that isn’t the same across all sites is, by orders of magnitude, the better option. A password locker lets you pick a strong 20 character password for everything.
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