Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
Security is of vital importance when surfing the Web or shopping online, but protecting your personal and financial information with dozens of highly complicated passwords can be such a bother – especially when you’re forced to change them every time you turn around due to yet another dime-a-dozen security threat.
There’s a reason why “password” has long been, and remains, one of the most popular passwords amongst computer users – we’re lazy when it comes to protecting our privacy and financial records. Fortunately, a new security tool from Dashlane makes it easier than ever to change your website passwords…by doing it for you.
As BGR’s Chris Smith explains, the Dashlane Password Changer logs into the various websites where the user wants to change his or her passwords, then automatically changes them while storing the new credentials and allowing easy access social media websites, e-commerce retailers or other important webpages.
Dashlane CEO Emmanuel Schalit calls the tool “the antidote for future Heartbleeds,” telling Smith, “the ability to automatically change passwords is revolutionary. It provides users a highly effective way to stay safe from increasingly common security breaches on the scale of Heartbleed. Password Changer introduces a new paradigm of convenience and security for the consumer.”
Credit: Dashlane
While Dashlane is not the only company that offers management of online passwords, Marshall Honorof of Tom’s Guide reports that once the company launches its new service, it will be the first to allow users to change all of their passwords with a single click. Password Changer is now in beta and Honorof said that it will eventually be able to change your passwords by itself on a regular basis.
“While Password Changer is not yet automated, it does have access to more than 70 services,” he said. “Changing your password is as simple as choosing the service you want and typing in a new password for it. The Dashlane software takes care of the rest. It can even integrate services with two-factor authentication, which makes reaching for your phone to simply update a password unnecessary.”
According to USA Today reporter Jefferson Graham, Dashlane will be free for its 2.5 million members on one computer, and will cost $39.99 for those wanting to keep track of passwords on PCs, phones, tablets and other devices. The service works with websites such as Amazon, Dropbox, eBay, Facebook, Google, PayPal and Twitter, and the company looks to expand it over the new few months.
And then there’s the whole automatic password changes at regularly-scheduled interval thing. In a statement, the company said that the soon-to-be-introduced feature would allow users to, for instance, schedule Password Changer to automatically change some of their most essential passwords every 30 days, removing the need to worry about password security by completely eliminating them from the log-in credential creation process.
As Dashlane co-founder Alexis Fogel explained to Graham, “Managing different passwords is really painful… even if just one account gets hacked, your entire digital identity is at risk.” Whenever there is a security threat, “you have to change” passwords “over and over again. Now, just go to the app, and everything is changed for you.”
Schalit added that the company’s goal is to make passwords “irrelevant for consumers” and to create an app that people can use without ever needing to “know, type, remember of even change their passwords.”
Nothing could possibly go wrong in such a situation, right? Well, unless the app stops working or gets hacked, or the company goes out of business leaving users completely unable to access any of their online accounts.
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