It Is Time To Choose a Password Manager

Dashlane and LastPass are the two major password keeper systems available, however there are quite a few and more coming every day.

I would recommend either Dashlane or Lastpass for the purpose of securely keeping your passwords in a reliable Internet based vault.   Here are my tips:

Dashlane seems to be oriented more toward Apple computer and device users.  David Pogue of Yahoo news recommends this service, and he has always been devoted to the Apple product side of things.

I found that the Dashlane program for Windows was a bit buggy, and LastPass wound up working better for me.  Both of them impose some adaptation on the user, so you should not expect totally smooth sailing in using either program.  Here are my main tips of the day for any of these programs:

1. Set a good strong password for the password manager and never, ever forget it. 

2. Make sure that you understand how password recovery works on your password manager in case you can't adhere to tip #1.

3. Make sure that you know how to go into the password manager vault and just look up your credentials for a website or service. 

Both programs are designed to automatically fill in user accounts and passwords for you, but sometimes they don't work with a particular website or service due to technical choices on the part of the service or website.  In those cases, you need to open up your Dashlane or LastPass program and copy and paste your user name and password into the site, or look it up and type it in. 

These are edge cases, and I don't have to do this often, but I know that if you just let LastPass or Dashlane take you along from their installation wizards, and you haven't really taken the time to learn to use them, you could be in for some frustration if they don't work on a site that you are under time pressure to log into.

Overall, they are great time savers, and both of them will generate new, very secure passwords for you that you would never have the ability to remember.  Both of them will import all of your saved passwords from your web browsers and store them in your vault when you install them.  After installation, they will ask if you want to do a security analysis, and they will offer to reset passwords for you that are heavily duplicated or very insecure (easy to hack/guess).  I would take it slow with that process so that you don't get locked out of anything if there is a problem.