The Perfect Password-Theft Cure – Dashlane
Hey, there!
This falls under the category of defending the success of your VO career via technology…keeping your passwords safe from malware that is out to steal them.
You’ve probably heard about (or maybe been affected by) any number of malware attacks that place software on your machine, and intercept your communications – supposedly safe, encrypted communications – including your passwords.
Every site that has contacted their users after one of these attacks has had one message: change your password for our site.
Every site, that is, except for one – because they were completely protected.
I’m here to tell you that there’s a better path, one that I chose to follow several years ago, and am thrilled with.
It happens to be the same site that didn’t need to have its users change their password.
Here’s why it’s the perfect cure for the malware blues.
It’s called Dashlane. It’s like a storage locker for your passwords, a wallet that’s super-encrypted that contains all of the passwords you use.
And it goes one step further: it generates highly random, extremely strong passwords that are the most difficult of all to guess (one estimate says that a hacker would take centuries on the fastest, largest computer network in the world to figure out any of them).
And you don’t have to remember any but one of those passwords – you just need Dashlane. With Dashlane running (and it only runs when you enter the one password you do need to remember, your master password), it enters your passwords for you.
Automatically.
That means that if you are a member of a casting, work, play, search or email site (including Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, major dating sites, shopping sites and 20,000 to 500,000 more sites), you didn’t and don’t have to worry about changing your Dashlane password, since it’s never stored anywhere unencrypted.
You still have to go through the chore of changing any password on any site that might be affected, no matter whether you use a password wallet like Dashlane or not, but Dashlane makes that super easy – you do it with the Dashlane app.
Now…here’s the good news. Dashlane is free.
Let me repeat that.
It’s free. Absolutely free.
But I strongly suggest one thing: don’t get the free version. Get the cheap, cheap, cheap Dashlane Premium version, because it allows you to sync all of your passwords amongst all of your devices the moment you have Dashlane create one. That means that when you run Dashlane on your computer, and add a strong password, Dashlane will make sure all your other devices (smartphone, tablet, etc) know about it and make it instantly available there.
With the Premium version, you’ll also get free cloud backup of your passwords, web access to your passwords should you lose a device, and premium VIP support should you get stuck.
It’s great.
And here’s a link that will get you 6 months of Dashlane Premium for free:
https://voheroes.com/grab-dashlane
I use it. And can’t live without it.
Hope this helps.
David
I also recommend Last Pass and 1Password, which I have used for years – so the one time fee has, aggregated over time, proved to be less expensive than the yearly Pro offerings of both Last Pass & Dashlane.
I share passwords for sites I use with the members of my family. Can Dashlane work so that, for example, everyone in my family could still access Netflix?
Not something that is usually kosher, so I don’t know. You’d have to check the terms of service of Netflix and the others. It’s physically possible to do that with any password schema, wallet or not, but companies can easily detect multiple uses of the access passwords from various IP addresses, which could result in your account being terminated. So…yes, but you should be careful.
The policy at Netflix is that it’s fine to share your account with immediate family and/or roommates. I was just not clear how it works. I will have to look into Dashlane to understand how they change passwords and see if my family would get shut out because the password had changed and they didn’t know about it.
Old thread, but I echo the recommendations for 1Password, especially for Mac/iOS device users. Been a Very Happy Customer for years. Importantly, there’s an inexpensive annual subscription that directly addresses some concerns of others for sharing passwords with families, by allowing you to do just that. Pro tip from a current computer professional – use distinct/different passwords on each website or service you use. That way if an account is ever compromised [ check out haveibeenpwned.com for just how bad it can be ], it’s not as likely to leak into other services. If you use the same password on Gmail and your bank and something else, even if it’s a strong password (upper and lower case, numbers, symbols – all of that is important, as well as the length of password 12 or 16 character passwords are basically the minimum now), if they’re the same, the attacker gains access to the keys to all your kingdoms – because they’re all the same key! 1Password, or any other “good” password manager will have a feature that allows you to generate hypersecure, very random passwords – or even pass phrases like “cat-donkey-dresden” – on a per-site/service basis. And, can alert you when an account has been compromised. 1Password even offers in-app 2-factor authentication (which has saved my bacon before) so those codes you have to generate, can be in-app in one nice place. And that subscription comes with very-secure cloud syncing across all your devices that you choose to setup. [Again, happy long-term customer, no relationship otherwise ]. LastPass may have some of this as well. 1Password isn’t necessarily free, but I learned long ago – pay for things you value. Digital security is one of those for me. I don’t have to know “Pqu38i971`41nlkm!#*#*” as a password – I just have to know that it’s in 1Password, and can go get it there, with my only-in-my-head password to 1Password itself, unlock the vault, spit-spot – I got it.