Ryan Gosling's Phone Number

Password Purgatory

We all experience the web in a personalized way. Whether through social media sites, a financial service or even weather.com, our favorite web sites need to know who we are. They identify us is by our username and password. If you're like most people you have probably lost count of the number of websites that require you to login and thus choose a password. Since no one has the mental capacity to remember dozens of thosy pesky annoyances most of us have at worst one, or slightly less worse, a few that we choose to use and reuse and reuse. We know this isn't a best practice and it leaves us open for all sorts of evil, but how else are we going to keep track of what we need to access the services we have come to depend on? We get frustrated by websites that require us to use uppercase letters, lowercase letters, symbols and numbers, not to mention eight or more characters (and sometimes the blood of a virgin).

Last Pass

LastPass, a service available for free on desktop and laptop computers and for a fee on mobile devices, can solve your password problems. It installs as an add-on to the most popular web browsers: Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox and Chrome. Using the same level of encryption that protects the most sensitive data in the world (think nuclear secrets or Ryan Gosling's phone number) LastPass keeps a database of all your passwords. It stores the information from multiple credit cards to plug into web forms along with more routine data like your name, address and phone number. It will save secure notes for PINs and programs (e.g., the Apple App Store) that don't run in a browser. In short, LastPass will securely store any information that could be misused to hurt you online.
When you use LastPass "[all] sensitive data is encrypted and decrypted locally before syncing... Your key never leaves your device, and is never shared with LastPass. Your data stays accessible only to you." You can also choose to use two-factor authentication. This requires something you know, your password and something you have, usually your phone (to receive an authentication text).

Good Security Habits

Using good Internet security is like flossing your teeth. You don't see an immediate reward but when you go to the dentist for a $1200 root canal you could kick yourself for not being concerned in the past. The Internet is really not a scary place. A computer is a tool. Sure people can use it to threaten you or steal from you. They can also do the same with a pencil, a typewriter, or a telephone. So let's get past the idea that we need to be scared. What we need to be is careful.
In cases where password databases have been stolen and leaked, analysis reveals some unsurprising information. None of the commonly used passwords include a capital letter or a symbol. In fact, passwords used over and over again include 12345, "password" and the always popular qwerty. If you are being explicitly targeted, programs readily available for free on the Internet can try millions of combinations of the most common phrases and variations of birthdays, initials, addresses, SSNs and colleges for you and your family. If your pet's name is on Facebook or Twitter, add that to the mix as well.

The only protection is to use different passwords on every single website you go to you and to make sure those passwords are extremely difficult for any person or computer to crack. Your passwords need to be so complex that there's no way you could remember more than one or two of them.

Still Not Convinced?

Not only will LastPass provide additional security, it will also increase efficiency, speeding up browsing by plugging passwords into any website requiring one. Enter your LastPass authentication when opening a browser and then let the service take over. For use on desktops and laptops LastPass is free. It costs $1 a month to use on a mobile device.
You may think that you really don't have anything to hide and don't require any special sorts of security. But if you use social media you stand a chance of having your identity used in all sorts of embarrassing ways. But what if you occasionally buy things online? And, certainly you know that if you access your bank or credit card accounts, you have a definite reason to be concerned about security.
LastPass is easy to use. If you've been saving your passwords in a web browser, LastPass can import them for you and then delete them from the browser's history. You can also build your LastPass database one website at the time. Anytime you log into a page with which LastPass is not familiar, it will ask you if you'd like to create a secure password. The correct answer is yes. Of course you can also sit down and in one marathon session, log in to every site important to you and choose the secure passwords offered to you by LastPass.

Yeah but...

Don't worry about your computer's platform. LastPass works on Macs, PCs and even Linux boxes. The mobile app works on both iOS and on Android phones. Should you be away from your own computer and need to use someone else's, don't worry, you can log in to LastPass.com.
I've been using a computer for over 20 years. I was on the Internet before there was an Internet. For me to use something every day, it's got to be pretty special. The fact that the first thing I install on any browser I use is LastPass, should tell you how important I think it is. Try it. You have nothing to lose if you do and a lot to lose if you don't.