Posts Tagged Password Tools

More on LastPass

Jun 19

Posted by sheffner in lifehacks + cooltools | Comments off

LastPass update. (Click here for all my LastPass posts.)

Trouble logging into Yahoo with LastPass on my iPad: the Yahoo login page won’t let me paste the password. I have to type it in.

Lastpass logs me in automatically into one website for which I have, for some reason, two passwords. Which one is LastPass using to log me in? If only I could switch off this automatic login! I searched the online support, FAQs and the pdf user manual, but couldn’t find how to turn off the automatic login, and have requested a ticket from tech support.

As a rule, I never enable the automatic login (I figured it would only cause me trouble, and I was right!). Instead, I just choose the “Autofill” option.

Update: As they say, it helps to read the friendly manual. I have discovered the reason why LastPass was automatically logging me into certain websites. It’s a feature, not a bug.

Also in this post:

is Yahoo! Japan preventing cut-and-paste when logging in?
LastPass’ One Time Passwords: why use them when there’s the virtual keyboard to foil keyloggers?
what to do first if you think your Lastpass account has been compromised?
and, when I see my Vault in my web-browser, am I looking at my local version or my online one?

First, here’s why LastPass was automatically logging me in: I was clicking on the name of the website in my LastPass Vault. From the user manual: Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Password Tools

What is 2-factor authentication and do you need it?

Jun 2

Posted by sheffner in lifehacks + cooltools | Comments off

Documentsnap.com’s Brooks Duncan blogged about Evernote’s rollout of 2-step authentication recently. In an earlier blog post he explained how to set up 2-step authentication on Dropbox.

I haven’t tried 2-step authentication yet, so my questions are:what does it involve, how much time, trouble and money is it going to cost me to a) learn how to do it, b) implement it, and then decide if I really need it or not.

Here I’ll briefly introduce some articles I looked up to find out more about it, and help me decide if I need it and how much time and trouble it’s going to take. (The short answer, for those with ADD, is that I don’t think I need it at the moment because a) I keep really sensitive Evernotes in local non-synced notebooks, and b) thanks to LastPass, I have removed all my duplicate and weak passwords.) Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Password Tools

Lastpass – a brief review 2

May 27

Posted by sheffner in lifehacks + cooltools | Comments off

An update on using LastPass. (Part one is here.)

I’m using LastPass, a password storage program, as an extension to a portable version of Firefox which I keep on a USB thumb drive. I configured Firefox so that I can use it both at home and at my workplace computer.

However, today I’m at a different place and the network won’t let me use my portable Firefox to connect to the network. I tried fiddling with the proxy settings and port numbers, but it didn’t work, so I gave up and used Internet Explorer which is on the local computer.

Using the local computer’s IE, I could login to LastPass.com and gain access to my vault with all my passwords. However, I could not create a new one, and of course, because lastpass is not installed on this browser, it won’t pop up all those useful windows, offering to create a random password for this site, etc. It is possible to see an individual password for a site (in my LastPass Vault), and probably edit it (I didn’t try), but I could not see a way to generate a random password.

A few minutes’ reading the friendly manual taught me that what I am looking for is LastPass’ IE anywhere. I downloaded it to my USB and fired it up. It worked!

This is for Premium members only but there is a 14-day free trial. And anyway the Premium option is just $12 a year. Think I should spring for it? Let me discuss it with my business partner first. I’ll get back to you.

Tags: @Productivity, Password Tools

Lastpass – a brief review

May 26

Posted by sheffner in lifehacks + cooltools | Comments off

Evernote ambassador Jamie Rubin posted in early May about a new password-storage program that he was trying out: My Latest Automation: Password Management Plus Improved Security

I’ve been using Access Manager Pro for the last few years. It has worked very well, and there is even a portable version so you can export or copy it to a USB. It has a few drawbacks, however, which had caused me to be on the lookout for an alternative:

While it worked fine on my Windows Vista machine, it sometimes froze on Windows 7. In fact, it would freeze when I opened up a password record in order to edit it or tried to create a new one. As long as I was just viewing my passwords (and copying them to the clipboard), it worked fine. But…
There is no iOS app, so I had been re-using easily remembered passwords for sites that I often visit from my phone or iPad, thus compromising my security – not a desirable way to go.
On the plus side, because it works from a USB (the computer it’s running on needs to have the Microsoft .NET Framework version 2.0, 3.0 or 3.5), it isn’t browser dependent, and can be used to store and access program or file passwords.
Another plus – it’s free (tho I coughed up the $24.95 for the Pro version).

So, after reading Rubin’s positive review, I decided to give LastPass a whirl. I’ve been playing around with it most of the weekend, and here are my thoughts so far. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: @Productivity, Password Tools

How do you remember your passwords? Here’s a neat trick

Sep 4

Posted by sheffner in lifehacks + cooltools | Comments off

Update 17 Sep, 2017: Eric at Cloudwards emailed me recently to tell me of an excellent article on this subject that really covers a lot of ground. It’s long but worth the read if you’re concerned, or even just interested, in the security of your passwords. And if you’re not, maybe you should be:

My colleague James recently put together a pretty comprehensive piece on how to set up a strong password.There is a ton of information out there; our guide was designed to cut through the noise a bit. The post is here: https://www.cloudwards.net/how-to-set-up-a-strong-password/

Thanks, Eric. I also wrote about this more recently here:

How do you remember your passwords?

Do you have a lot of passwords? Is the Pope Catholic?!? I use Access Manager to help me keep track of mine, but I still need a few passwords that I use frequently, and it’s bothersome to open Access Manager and retrieve them each time. But if you don’t use a software program that can create highly secure passwords, you are probably going to end up recycling the same old passwords amongst your various accounts. This is obviously not very secure. So I was glad to read this tip on Gary North’s website.

If you want a password that you can remember easily, but which is close to unbreakable, here is a secret.Forget about symbols, such as @#$%^, which you will forget. Forget about mixtures of upper case and lower case. KISS: keep it simple.But aren’t simple passwords more easily broken? Yes, but only because they are short.Pick a phrase or the lyrics of a song. Then…

via Password Trick / Gary North.

(Graphic from http://www.addressmunger.com/password_hasher/ a password hashing website.)

A colleague recently had his gmail account hacked. And then there was the famous case of Honan.

Then today, Gary North offered this tip:

pick the first letter of each word. Then add five periods, like this ….. or five forward slashes, like this /////.

It is easy to remember five periods or five forward slashes. But this will add so many characters that code-breaking software will bog down.

How about you? Do you have a secure and simple way of creating and remembering your frequently used passwords?