PROPERLY FREE Password Manager – Synology C2 Password
|At this point, you’ve probably heard the term “password manager” more times that you care to count, and you might even use one yourself, but with more and more options limiting features and charging a monthly subscription for something that really should be getting cheaper and more feature rich – not less – it’s amazing to finally see an actually free option that’s still feature rich and doesn’t need a complicated setup process that’s not for everyone like self-hosting. That’s where this video’s sponsor, Synology, comes in with their new service called C2 Password.
Synology has been offering a number of cloud computing and storage solutions under the C2 name since 2017, but just this year launched C2 Password, their highly secure password management solution to store, sync and safeguard your passwords and personal information. I’ll explain more in a second, but let me address the question of cost. This is a fully free service, no billing or payment information required.
That often means the cost is your data, but happily that’s not the case here. Synology will be offering a paid plan, specifically a “Family Plan” which will offer higher limits to things like file transfers and as they say “more advanced features”, but that plan won’t affect the free tier. Your data is fully end-to-end encrypted so it won’t be compromised by any interceptions. On top of that, it’s designed to be zero-knowledge proof, meaning even Synology can’t access your passwords or secure data.
The other hook is that once you are on the C2 platform they hope you like their features enough that you’ll want to make use of their other C2 services like their upcoming Backup tool or their cloud storage solution. Add to that Synology being an established and trusted company with existing revenue sources, meaning C2 Password or the C2 platform in general isn’t their entire business model.
As for security, like I said they make use of complete end-to-end encryption, primarily using AES-256. They have a white paper you can have a read through, which details both how they derive the keys including which functions they use, the transfers involved in securely registering your keys with their service, and how the data is stored and encrypted locally.
So, hopefully you can be satisfied with the security and business, now I can explain the features. This isn’t just a password manager – although it does that well – but a tool to store everything from accounts and passwords, to important documents, banking information, addresses, secure notes and even WiFi details. You can manually add your existing passwords, or import a CSV if you’ve already got them stored somewhere. If you do it manually, you’ll be able to not only add things like the account name, password and website, but if you want to attach a note, or even a file you can add that in.
Of course, when using their browser extension it’ll automatically save new passwords and autofill when you return to a site with details saved for it. You can also see all of your saved data, search through them or generate new secure passwords that are between 5 and 30 characters long and has toggles for upper/lower case, numbers and special characters in case some sites are picky. You’ll also be able to access your data from their upcoming Android and iOS apps, and no matter what device or browser you can always access it via their website.
One limitation you often see is a cap on the number of devices your data will sync between – this doesn’t have that limit. It will sync with an unlimited number of devices, no matter the type or location. It’s designed for anyone to use, including both for business and as an individual. The cap on the number of items you can store is 10,000 – a limit I can’t imagine many people hitting in a hurry.
On top of the password storage, they have also integrated file transfers all still within the free plan. You are limited to a single transfer of up to 100MB to a single recipient at a time, and a maximum length of up to 7 days, but being able to share files with complete security is incredibly useful. They not only give you a link to share, but they secure that link with the recipient’s email and send a verification code when the link is accessed, meaning you can share the link to the file publicly and only the intended recipient will be able to access it.
So, that’s C2 Password. I’ll leave a link to their site in the description you can use to check them out and sign up. Thanks again to Synology for sponsoring this video.