LastPass acquired by LogMeIn

LastPass, my favorite cloud-based password manager, was acquired by LogMeIn on October 9, 2015.

The news was not well-received by the vocal minority, based on comments on the LastPass blog posting of the announcement. LogMeIn does not have a good track record with products they acquire. Their LogMeIn Free product, which they promised would remain free after they acquired it some years ago, was completely removed from the "free" list in January 2014 and is now a pay-only product.

This LogMeIn Free incident really ticked a lot of people off. Obviously, things can change for a company, and something made LogMeIn decide that their free product would no longer be free. But the way they did it was not very consumer friendly.

Incidentally, LogMeIn acquired another product many years ago called Hamachi, which allows you to create a private network among multiple computers. I use the free Hamachi, in combination with TeamViewer, to do tech support for friends and family. LogMeIn changed this product as well, several times over the years, and reduced it's capability significantly. The free product still meets my needs, but the changes they made rubbed many people the wrong way.

Anyway, I digress. After letting the news of the LastPass acquisition settle in for a few days and reading and listening to many of the experts out there, here's my take on things.

Don't panic! If you're using LastPass now, it's perfectly fine to continue using it. I am. It's still one of the best password management solutions out there. While nothing is 100% safe, it's the best option out there right now. The free product is great, but why the heck aren't you a LastPass Premium user? At $12/year, it's an absolute steal. Shhhh...don't tell LastPass, but I'd pay twice that annually for the value I get from LastPass.

Finally, below is a video from the Security Now podcast I follow regularly. Last week the hosts Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte talked about the acquisition for about 30 minutes with Joe Siegrist, CEO and Founder of LastPass. Joe seems sincere in his intentions to allow LastPass to continue down the current path they are on with the free model. Only time will tell if Joe continues to dictate the direction of LastPass and if LogMeIn allows him to do the same.

Superior password management using LastPass

Several months ago (around October 2010) I ran across a software product called LastPass that helps you manage passwords for all of the various web sites where you have an account (bank sites, health care, online newspapers, anything).  I've been using LastPass as my primary password management system for a couple of months now and it is FANTASTIC.  I've completely switched over to using it for 100% of my passwords on all of my machines.

In a nutshell, LastPass removes the true barrier to people using secure, hard-to-guess passwords: EASE OF USE.

You can read about all the features on their web site, but here are some of the highlights that make LastPass, in my opinion, the best password management system available.  I highly recommend that you think about switching over to using it as soon as possible.

• It's free for basic functionality.  Only $12 per year to use it on your mobile phone.
• You keep ONE master password to get access to all of your other passwords.  Only one password to remember.  You can make that one password hard to guess, but easy for you to remember.
• Your passwords are maintained on LastPass servers and synchronized among any and all computers (or other devices) you use.
• Your data is strongly encrypted on your PC before it is uploaded to LastPass, making it extremely secure.  LastPass does NOT have access to your stored passwords.  Nobody can access your data without your master password.
• LastPass fully integrates with all the major browsers (IE, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera) on Mac and Windows, as well as iPhone, Android and Blackberry.  After the encryption and security features, the browser integration is probably the single best feature of LastPass.
• When you visit a web site's login page, LastPass automatically fills in your username and password.  You don't have to remember your password for ANY web site anymore -- just your Master Password.
• Because you don't have to REMEMBER every password, you can create a different password for every web site you use.  If one web site become compromised, which happens far more frequently than we all would like, your other sites are safe because you don't share the same password across multiple sites.
• LastPass is pretty simple to install and configure.
• LastPass will import passwords from your current browser, if you've been using that method to store your passwords now (which is actually VERY insecure).  Once you get them into LastPass, you can slowly start changing them to be more secure.
• LastPass will analyze your entire set of passwords and point out where your passwords are not ideal, identify sites that share the same password, and rate your overall password security.

Again, I can't recommend LastPass enough.  Check it out.  Let me know if you need help.