As of a few days ago, I have experienced one of the worst things you could possibly experience in a digital life. I have completely lost access to my password manager database. Despite my best to be as diligent as possible, I have completely failed to properly secure my database of 300-400 accounts from the worst case scenario, and I have failed to create a safety net for said scenario to recover from. While I am lucky that it only resulted an annoying and very time-consuming process of resetting everything, and with small losses of nearly unimportant accounts, it could’ve been far worse. I am thankful to have this experience to learn and not lose more than I already did. In order to properly explain what led me to this point, I need to tell you the story.
I’ve been a loyal KeePass user for many years. Ever since I started to take more notice of how insecure it is to reuse the same terrible password for all the websites and services, I set up my own database locally, and maintained it for somewhere around 4 years. I made no backups of anything at the time, other than still locally on a USB stick, as my idea of a good master password was “randomly generated and in a txt next to the database file”, which is… not great opsec. And it always felt a bit suffocating to not be able to create proper backups.
So a few days ago, I set a new one that I thought I could very easily remember. I was so confident in my memory of that password, that the only information about it that I left behind was some small clues and a riddle, and I figured that if I forgot somehow, I’d be able to recover it from that small bit of information. I made sure to periodically practice many times on remembering and entering the password, and I went on my merry way.
Fast forward to a few hours later. I’ve been doing my usual business and I figured that now would be a great time to remember the password and re-enter it again. So I diligently entered it character by character, and made sure that it was correctly entered. I pressed enter, immediately expecting to see the rows of delicious account information I held close for a long time.
It didn’t work.
Perplexed, I entered it again, making doubly sure that I did it correctly.
It still didn’t work.
A sense of panic began to slowly creep into my body. I calmed myself down, and double checked the emergency sheets of vague information I left behind. But I wasn’t able to get anything useful from it. Re-entering various alterations of the password I was sure were correct did nothing. The panic only grew with each attempt and new idea on how to get back into that goddamn database.
At some point, I realized that shit hit the fan and that I was properly screwed. I still tried to cling on to the withering feeling of denial, and tried so many other things to get it back. Trying various password cracking tools with my failed variations of the password didn’t work. Angrily speaking all sorts of insults relating to ineptitude and mental deficiency to myself didn’t work. Sleeping on it and trying to remember didn’t work. I was stuck for good. I eventually just gave up with focusing on getting it back, and conceded with the fact that I’ll have to start from scratch.
I took this opportunity to switch to Bitwarden for easier syncing options between devices, and went through every account I could find and think of to reset its password. Thankfully, every account that is super important was saved and now in the new database for me to keep using. The only real losses I’m aware of at the moment are one e-mail account with no recovery options that I moved everything I could from, one e-mail account I never used, and probably some other throwaways or old accounts I stopped using. There’s still many more accounts I haven’t saved yet, but at least they’re a password reset away from being usable again. And this time, I took the time to create a proper emergency sheet with backup codes that I have encrypted and created backups for with the 3-2-1 backup rule.
With the entire lead-up to the point of no return, it’s not hard to see why it all unfolded the way it did. The gross negligence and unfounded overconfidence within me at the time were quite palpable, and were the root problems that led me to this situation. While I’ve always been vaguely aware that my current standards for data are woefully poor to properly save all of it, being short on funds means that there is currently no proper way for improvement for me in this regard. However, my password database was so light and easy enough to save and create recovery options for, that there was no excuse to not do it better. I took everything in it and about it for granted, and didn’t realize the fragility of my digital life and human memory. The idea that I could, in fact, just not remember the one key needed to everything I have completely slipped my mind, and I paid a not inconsiderate price for it.
Needless to say, with the proper precautions I have executed now, it is the lesson I will only learn once.
Nov 18 2025
The Password Lesson You Only Learn Once
As of a few days ago, I have experienced one of the worst things you could possibly experience in a digital life. I have completely lost access to my password manager database. Despite my best to be as diligent as possible, I have completely failed to properly secure my database of 300-400 accounts from the worst case scenario, and I have failed to create a safety net for said scenario to recover from. While I am lucky that it only resulted an annoying and very time-consuming process of resetting everything, and with small losses of nearly unimportant accounts, it could’ve been far worse. I am thankful to have this experience to learn and not lose more than I already did. In order to properly explain what led me to this point, I need to tell you the story.
I’ve been a loyal KeePass user for many years. Ever since I started to take more notice of how insecure it is to reuse the same terrible password for all the websites and services, I set up my own database locally, and maintained it for somewhere around 4 years. I made no backups of anything at the time, other than still locally on a USB stick, as my idea of a good master password was “randomly generated and in a txt next to the database file”, which is… not great opsec. And it always felt a bit suffocating to not be able to create proper backups.
So a few days ago, I set a new one that I thought I could very easily remember. I was so confident in my memory of that password, that the only information about it that I left behind was some small clues and a riddle, and I figured that if I forgot somehow, I’d be able to recover it from that small bit of information. I made sure to periodically practice many times on remembering and entering the password, and I went on my merry way.
Fast forward to a few hours later. I’ve been doing my usual business and I figured that now would be a great time to remember the password and re-enter it again. So I diligently entered it character by character, and made sure that it was correctly entered. I pressed enter, immediately expecting to see the rows of delicious account information I held close for a long time.
It didn’t work.
Perplexed, I entered it again, making doubly sure that I did it correctly.
It still didn’t work.
A sense of panic began to slowly creep into my body. I calmed myself down, and double checked the emergency sheets of vague information I left behind. But I wasn’t able to get anything useful from it. Re-entering various alterations of the password I was sure were correct did nothing. The panic only grew with each attempt and new idea on how to get back into that goddamn database.
At some point, I realized that shit hit the fan and that I was properly screwed. I still tried to cling on to the withering feeling of denial, and tried so many other things to get it back. Trying various password cracking tools with my failed variations of the password didn’t work. Angrily speaking all sorts of insults relating to ineptitude and mental deficiency to myself didn’t work. Sleeping on it and trying to remember didn’t work. I was stuck for good. I eventually just gave up with focusing on getting it back, and conceded with the fact that I’ll have to start from scratch.
I took this opportunity to switch to Bitwarden for easier syncing options between devices, and went through every account I could find and think of to reset its password. Thankfully, every account that is super important was saved and now in the new database for me to keep using. The only real losses I’m aware of at the moment are one e-mail account with no recovery options that I moved everything I could from, one e-mail account I never used, and probably some other throwaways or old accounts I stopped using. There’s still many more accounts I haven’t saved yet, but at least they’re a password reset away from being usable again. And this time, I took the time to create a proper emergency sheet with backup codes that I have encrypted and created backups for with the 3-2-1 backup rule.
With the entire lead-up to the point of no return, it’s not hard to see why it all unfolded the way it did. The gross negligence and unfounded overconfidence within me at the time were quite palpable, and were the root problems that led me to this situation. While I’ve always been vaguely aware that my current standards for data are woefully poor to properly save all of it, being short on funds means that there is currently no proper way for improvement for me in this regard. However, my password database was so light and easy enough to save and create recovery options for, that there was no excuse to not do it better. I took everything in it and about it for granted, and didn’t realize the fragility of my digital life and human memory. The idea that I could, in fact, just not remember the one key needed to everything I have completely slipped my mind, and I paid a not inconsiderate price for it.
Needless to say, with the proper precautions I have executed now, it is the lesson I will only learn once.
By yoshi • Nonsense • 0