420 It’s time to switch away from LastPass

I used and recommended LastPass as the best password manager for years. But it’s time for a change. The idea behind a password manager program is that it can remember all of your passwords for you. So you don’t have to use easy-to-remember passwords that are insecure. And you don’t have to use the same password for all of your accounts (really bad idea). And LastPass was the choice for most computer security professionals for a long time. My first blog post recommendation here was around 10 years ago. But Lastpass has unfortunately gone downhill. In recent months, LastPass has been compromised multiple times by hackers trying to get at user data. In one case, a Lastpass employee’s home computer was hacked and some user data was possibly obtained. And a recent update from LastPass broke something in the program – I was not even able to log in to my bank account using it. Also, LastPass has been criticized because their announcements of these breaches have not fully stated the severity of what happened. They have tried to balance giving out all the necessary information with trying to maintain a positive image as a company. So, I have been doing research in order to learn what to recommend. There are a few password manager programs to choose from. My recommendation is a program called BitWarden. There is a consensus among security techs that it is strong and trustworthy. And, I’ve been using it now for about a month and I’m happy with it. You can get Bitwarden at Bitwarden.com . There is a free version for personal use, but there’s also a $10 annual subscription that gives you some more features. Setting up your account is easy. Like most password manager programs, it can run as an extension inside Chrome or other browsers to make it really easy to login to all your website accounts. Bitwarden can also generate really good passwords for you so you don’t have to sit and try to think of random letters and numbers to come up with something. Here’s the basic process to migrate over from LastPass: Export all of your password info from your LastPass account, and save that in a spreadsheet temporarily on your computer. Install the Bitwarden extension in your browser (such as Chrome). Import your password info from the saved spreadsheet into Bitwarden. There are some details involved in each of those steps, but it’s too much to include here. If you need help moving from LastPass to Bitwarden (or getting started with a password manager for the first time), I can handle that for you through my Remote Support Service . For settings in Bitwarden, my personal preference is to have the login information autofill whenever the account page loads – it just makes things easier. I also set the vault timeout to “Never” – but you might prefer a different option, depending on your computer and level of concern for security. I highly recommend a password manager program. Everything I have seen so far tells me that Bitwarden is a good option. The post 420 It’s time to switch away from LastPass first appeared on The Computer Tutor .

You can listen to 420 It’s time to switch away from LastPass online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

420 It’s time to switch away from LastPass is an episode from The Computer Tutor by Scott Johnson.

The episode duration depends on the source podcast feed and may not always be available.

This episode was published on Mar 13, 2023.

Yes. Use the heart button on the episode page to add it to your favorite episodes list.

Yes. This page shows related episodes from The Computer Tutor when more episodes are available from the podcast feed.