How To Save And Manage Passwords Free with LastPass
Got Passwords?
In today’s world if you don’t have passwords then you are probably living in a cave or not living at all. Everyone has passwords. You might have a password for just logging in to your computer. Are you on Facebook? Just about everyone is and if you are then you have to have a password. Passwords are used for email, banking online, and more. I pay very close attention to security when it comes to passwords and doing anything online. In doing so there is one thing that is a constant rule to abide by. So please allow me to give you some very good advice and fair warning; Do Not Use The Same Password On All Of Your Online Whereabouts!
I’m not trying to scare anyone away from using computers. I am actually encouraging it. Although with anything in life there is a right way and a wrong way to do things. I’m simply trying to help you possibly get things started on the right foot. It does not matter whether you are on a PC, Mac, of Linux computer; if you are on the internet then you need to be careful about securing your personal information. What this means is that if you’re using “123”, or “password” for all of your passwords; there’s a good chance that your information could be at risk. Hackers and online thieves have many ways to use their evil tactics to break in to your information and gain access to things that you don’t want them to be toying around with. So what should you do? How can you help protect yourself?
How To Get LastPass:
LastPass is in my opinion the very best password manager. I recently began using it and I have not looked back. It doesn’t matter if you are on a budget here because yes, LastPass is FREE!. There is a premium version that allows you to use it on your smartphone and mobile devices. Even the premium package is not very expensive. I believe it comes to about $12.00 a year. LastPass can be found simply by going to this link: http://www.lastpass.com
As stated before LastPass can be installed on virtually any computer no matter what operating system you are using. It also works in every single internet browser that you use. I personally have LastPass installed on every computer I own and running in, Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox, and Chrome. It works flawlessly in all of these.
So to get LastPass simply go to the site and hit either of these buttons depending on which version you’d like to use. Again the only difference is that the LastPass Premium isn’t free and allows you to install LastPass on your smartphones and mobile devices.
When you download LastPass and run the installer you will be walked through it’s set up. It’s very simple and straight forward. Make sure that you create a tough and secure password to serve as your new one password. It’s safe practice to write it down somewhere and keep it where you can find it and remember it. On a yellow post-it note stuck to your computer monitor is really not what I’m talking about here. The whole point to this is to help keep you secure. Also it’s a good idea to make sure that you add capitalization and a few numbers or symbols. Anything like this that you can do to make your one password harder to guess or hack into will help you live more secure.
So once you pick your one password then you will be able to get started using LastPass.
How To Use LastPass:
I’m not going to do a step by step on how to use the software. It’s just far too simple and there are plenty of help forums on the LastPass website. What I am going to do here in this section is to explain the point of using it and how it does help keep you safe. My suggestion to you if you want to know that you are very secure would be to ahead and log in to each website that you know you have a password for. Go through each of these site’s “change your password” features. One of LastPass’s best features is the ability to generate secure passwords.
LastPass is so simple that when you sign in and go through a change your password on any site that LastPass will come up with a browser button asking you if you’d like to auto-generate a new password. This is a good idea. LastPass will give you a secure password. It will automatically fill in the boxes that you need to type in your password. One click. Done.
A Few Key Features:
LastPass does not store any of your passwords on your computer. Your passwords get stored in your LastPass Vault. When you sign in to LastPass via your browswer you can click on the LastPass drop down button and you will see a few different options. You’ll have preferences, help, tools, and a bunch of other features. Don’t get discouraged by all the different features. You don’t have to use all of them. The one where all of your passwords are stored is called, “My LastPass Vault”.
I have my LastPass set to create 16 character passwords any time I need a new password. Once I allow LastPass to generate the password. It goes into My LastPass Vault and then I’m done. I don’t worry about it anymore. I don’t have a clue off the top of my head what any of my passwords are. I just know my LastPass one password. Of course I back up so that if something ever happened to my computers then I’d still be able to find out what my passwords are. This is a good practice too. Any good tech guy will tell you repetitively. To back up, back up, back up. This website already has written an article on backing up that you can view by clicking here:
http://www.pcmtechhelp.com/2012/04/26/how-to-backup-windows-files-why-is-pc-backup-important/
Conclusion:
There are many different password management apps out there. This is the one that I use. This is also the one that many more professional technicians use which is where I found out about it. LastPass just works. It’s low maintenance, but highly secure. Try it out for free today and let us know what you think! I promise you that you will sleep easier knowing that your online life is much more secure than it was before LastPass came to your rescue!