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27 'LastPass' stories October 2013 - January 2014
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The worst password of all is no longer ‘password’ according to hacked accounts chart

Avatar for Ben Lovejoy Jan 20 2014 - 4:27 am PT
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You might have thought that it would be hard to come up with a worse password than ‘password,’ but according to a chart compiled by SplashData from hacked accounts, it has been edged out by ‘123456’.

The far more secure ‘12345678’ (33 percent more secure!) retains its position as number three, while a new entry in sixth place goes as far as ‘123456789’. Sadly, ‘letmein’, a password I always felt deserving of classic status, dropped seven places to achieve a mediocre ranking of 14.

Apple introduced iCloud Keychain as part of Mavericks and iOS 7.0.3, and if you’re not already using it, you can read our how-to guide. If you’re using older versions of OS X or iOS, we also ran a how-to guide on using a password manager to have unique, secure passwords for each website.

Via re/code

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LastPass password manager iOS app gets simplified UI & family logins

Avatar for Ben Lovejoy Nov 5 2013 - 4:35 am PT
15 Comments

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The popular free password manager app LastPass has been given a revamped user-interface across iOS app, Android app and browser add-on, aimed at both a cleaner look and greater ease of use.

Paid users also get access to a new Shared Family Folder, allowing up to five users to get shared access to joint logins. The LastPass blog highlights the new features in version 3.0 as:

  • Revamped user experience and user interface
  • Field icon menus for easy access to logins and LastPass tools
  • A Shared Family Folder for up to 5 users
  • Expanded Shared Folder features for LastPass Enterprise
  • A revamped LastPass for Applications
  • Secure Note history, to track changes to your notes

LastPass is a free download, and we have a detailed tutorial on how to use it.

How to: Use a password manager to have strong, unique passwords for each website

Avatar for Ben Lovejoy Oct 10 2013 - 6:46 am PT
26 Comments
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Image: redorbit.com

Image: redorbit.com

Evernote, Adobe, even Apple … just a few of the companies who have found their user data compromised by hackers in recent times. The possibility of a hacker being able to access one of your web accounts is worrying enough – but if you use the same email address and password for almost all the websites you use, the risk becomes huge.

The first thing a hacker does when they get hold of a list of usernames and passwords is to use automated software to fire them at a whole bunch of popular websites. That means your online security is only as good as the most vulnerable of the websites you visit. Not good.

The answer, of course, is to use a unique – and strong – password for each website you access. But that creates its own hassles. Strong passwords aren’t easily memorised. Sure, we can ask our browsers to store logins for us, but when you might use several different computers, an iPhone and an iPad, you’d have to login once from each device as soon as you chose the password so it gets stored before you forget it. Not very convenient.

Which is where password managers come in. When you see the instructions, it’ll look like a long process, but it in fact takes only 10-20 mins if you have two or three devices … 
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