LastPass – a Cloudeight Freeware Pick

We really wish this would be the last pass for us reminding you how important using strong passwords for all your online accounts is. We really wish this was the last pass for us reminding you never to use the same password twice for anything. We really wish that this was the last pass for reminding you how important passwords are and how passwords are the best line of defense you have against getting your personal information stolen.

But we’re all human. Most of us are reactive and not proactive. We wait until something happens and think “If only I would have….” or “I knew what I should have done.” We do learn well by painful lessons. But some lessons are more painful and costly than others. Having your online banking account password guessed (not stolen) by someone who guessed your password was 12345 or password or dsmith1281…. is painful and costly. Having your Yahoo or Gmail or Hotmail account accessed is painful and possibly embarrassing…and maybe costly too, if you have any of your credit card information or banking account details stored in your online mail accounts (which you shouldn’t have).

Today we’re featuring one of our favorite freeware programs. It’s called LastPass. LastPass is a password manager. In today’s cloudy Web you need a password manager. Period. Whether you want to take our advice and get LastPass Free or pay for Roboform, or you think you have a better one, get a password manager.

Now I’ve been using LastPass for over two years now and I’m perfectly happy with it. I am perfectly happy with not knowing any of my LastPass generated complex passwords. If someone tied me to a stake and drove bamboos shoots into my toenails, I couldn’t save myself because I really don’t know what my passwords are. Most of them look like this:

NV88%41LBjaT4

I love it. Who in the world is going to remember that or guess that? No one. That’s want I want. All I ever have to remember is my master password to LastPass and all my other passwords are unlocked – but only for me. And when I visit a Web site that requires a username and password, LastPass fills it in for me – automatically.

Oh really? You say your browser does that for you? And what happens when your kids, grandkids or someone else uses your browser. Do you have it set up to require a master password before you auto-login to your accounts? Does your browser generate strong, uncrackable passwords? Does your browser have a Secure Notes feature where you can store sensitive information in encrypted form? No? Your browser was free, and so is LastPass so why are you still using your browser’s password manager anyway? If you’re using your browser’s built-in password manager on a laptop, you’re taking an even bigger chance – unless you’re one of the astute ones who knows how to password protect your browser’s password store. And no we’re not going to tell you how to do that – because storing your passwords in your browser doesn’t give you the security or the features of LastPass. You still wouldn’t have a password generator – which generates and remembers complex strong passwords. And you still wouldn’t have a Secure Notes feature.

The time has come to stop using weak passwords. The time has come to stop using the same password for everything simply because you’re afraid if you use a different password for everything you’ll forget your passwords. The time for storing your passwords in a Word doc (we know some of you do that) or printing them out on paper and locking them in a desk drawer (yes we know some of you do that too) is long past. We all live in the age of the cloud and it’s getting cloudier and cloudier. Whether you like the cloud or hate the cloud doesn’t matter. The cloud is going to continue to grow and become more and more of your Internet life.

LastPass Free is our freeware pick this week. That means it costs you nothing – zero – nada. LastPass works with Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Window 7 – both 32bit and 64bit versions of them all. LastPass works with your browser whether you use Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Firefox, or Safari. You’ve really got no excuse anymore to be using weak passwords or worse, the same weak password for everything.

You can read more about LastPass from https://www.lastpass.com/ – if you don’t need to read more, and want to jump right to the download, you can download LastPass Free from here. https://lastpass.com/misc_download.php .

The master password you set unlocks LastPass and after you’ve entered your master password, LastPass will automatically fill in your username and password for every account you’ve created in LastPass. And even creating accounts in LastPass is automatic. Go to a site which requires you to log in, type in your username and password and LastPass will ask you if you want to save your password and username in LastPass. If your passwords are week, you can have LastPass generate new ones for you and remember them too.

There’s no excuse for anyone to be roaming around the Web without a password manager anymore. LastPass Free costs nothing, it’s easy enough to learn to use that even Web neophytes can use it.

LastPass Free is one of our favorite freeware programs and one saves us time and aggravation. Get LastPass right now and start shoring up those weak passwords before you learn the hard way that weak passwords are bad for you and your personal information. Don’t wait until you experience a painful lesson in Internet security – weak passwords are an invitation to big trouble.

LastPass works with Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. It works on 32bit and 64bit versions of Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7. Download size varies depending on which download your choose.