“If you want to avoid having your identity stolen, use long passwords that contain digits, punctuation and no recognizable words. Make up a different password for every website. And change all of your passwords every 30 days.”
Have these security pundits ever listened to themselves?
That advice is clearly unfollowable. I have account names and passwords for 87 websites (banks, airlines, blogs, shopping, email, Facebook, Twitter). How is anyone — even a security professional — supposed to memorize 87 long, complex password strings, let alone remember which goes with which website?
So most people use the same password over and over again, and live with the guilt.
There are solutions. Most Mac and Windows Web browsers now offer to memorize passwords for you. But that feature doesn’t work on all websites, and is generally of little help when you pick up your phone or tablet. At that point, the only person you’ve locked out of all your online accounts is you.
The only decent solution is to install a dedicated password-memorization program (like Roboform, KeyPass, LastPass, 1Password, and so on). Last week, one of the best was just improved: Dashlane, now at 2.0. It’s attractive, effective, loaded with time-saving features and available for Mac, Windows, iPhone and Android — and it’s free.
Installation is quick. Dashlane works in Safari, Chrome, Internet Explorer and Firefox. It can import existing password “vaults” from rival programs.
Dashlane has two primary features. First, yes, it’s a password memorizer. Every time you type your account name and password into a Web page and press enter, Dashlane pops up, offering to memorize that information and fill it in the next time.
In fact, it also offers to log you in — not just to enter your password, but also to click “log in” for you. In effect, Dashlane has just removed the login blockade entirely. When you go to Facebook, Twitter or Gmail, you just click your bookmark, smile at the briefest flash of the login screen and arrive at the site.
Since Dashlane is now storing and auto-entering your passwords, you’re free to follow the security experts’ advice. You can make up long, unguessable passwords — a different one for every website, since you don’t have to remember any of them. In fact, each time you sign up for a new account, Dashlane offers to make up such a password for you and then, of course, to memorize it.
Dashlane’s second huge feature is even more amazing. It can also fill in other kinds of website forms: your name/address/phone number and even your credit card information.
When you’re buying something online, and you click into the credit card number box, Dashlane displays pictures of your credit cards: Visa, MasterCard, American Express or whatever — even PayPal.
When you click the one you want to use, Dashlane instantly fills in the long card number, your name, the expiration date, even that accursed security code, in the right boxes. Every time you order something online, you save between 30 seconds and five minutes, depending on whether you have your card information memorized or have to go burrow through your wallet.
In version 2.0, furthermore, you have the option of using two-factor authentication.
The other big change in Dashlane 2.0 isn’t quite so joyous. True, Dashlane can wirelessly synchronize all your passwords between your computer and phone, so that the phone, too, automatically enters them as you surf. But in 2.0, that feature now costs $20 a year.
