Today’s app recommendation is a quick, but important, one!
After many instances of getting my accounts hacked (rest in peace, my Gaia Online and Neopets accounts), forgetting my old passwords, and getting way too many two-factor authentication emails for login attempts that were decidedly not me, I decided to bite the bullet and get a password manager. After doing a minimal amount of research, I decided to use LassPass.
Unexpectedly, my favorite feature of LastPass was the ability to automatically update my passwords to more secure versions. It was truly hands-off – I just put my current password in and let the application open a new tab and change my password for me! This feature isn’t available on all websites, but it can be used on many of the biggest heavy hitters, like Google, Facebook, and Twitter. On other sites, it can still generate a secure password for you. They truly make it as easy as possible to “set and forget” your new, secure passwords. I didn’t know how liberating it would be to not even know my own passwords!
I tried surviving off of LastPass’s free version – which, at the time, was limited to the browser and Chrome extension only – for as long as I could, but eventually upgraded to Premium after struggling a lot with logging in to websites and apps on my phone. Premium only costs less than $40 a year, which I feel is a reasonable price to pay for heightened security for all of my accounts.
(Not sponsored! Just a big fan! Don’t get your Gaia account hacked like I did, kids!)
Anyway, even if you don’t get LastPass, I highly recommend using any password manager outside of your browser’s built in version and implementing different passwords for different sites. The worst I’ve ever suffered from a hack was getting fancy bits stolen from my avatar – and that was devastating! It could have been a lot worse!
Trisha Serquina 