LastPass Guide to Online Password Management

LastPass is an online password manager and form filler that makes web browsing easier and more secure.

Do you constantly enter your username and password everytime you visit a social networking site such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc? What about your email accounts.. what about your online banking.. what about when you pay your different bills online.

And that is just your personal stuff.. Don’t forget about all you work usernames and passwords!

How many usernames and passwords do you have when your surf the internet? Too many to count?

Why don’t you simplify your online experience by having ONE password?

LastPass will make things so much easier for you and I’ll show you how.

Why is LastPass Safe?

1. All sensitive data is encrypted locally
All encryption/decryption occurs on your computer, not on the LastPass servers. This means that your sensitive data does not travel over the Internet and it never touches their servers, only the encrypted data does.

2. Strong Encryption
AES utilising 256-bit keys. AES-256 is accepted by the US Government for protecting top secret data. Your encrypted data is meaningless to LastPass and to everyone else without the decryption key.

3. Only you know the key to decrypt your data
Your encryption key is created from your email address and password. Your password is never sent to LastPass (only a one way hash of your password when authenticating), so the components that make up your key remain local. This is why it is so important to not forget your LastPass password.

4. No more using your browser’s insecure password manager
Were you surprised at how easy we retrieved all of your passwords from your browser when you installed our software using the LastPass application? Unfortunately, any malicious application can easily do the same. With LastPass, this will no longer be possible.

Getting Started

Download and run the installer from LastPass.

During the install you will be prompted to enter a username (email address) and a password. This will be the master password that give you access to ALL your saved sites and their respective usernames and passwords.

Choose a really strong and long password! This can always be changed at anytime.

The installer:

• Allows you to create an account
• Finds insecure passwords currently on your system and allows you to import into LastPass
• Allows you to secure your system by deleting these insecure logins
• Creates a Form Fill profile
• Installs the LastPass Browser Plugin for Internet Explorer and Firefox

After installation, you will notice the LastPass icon in your browser’s toolbar,

Click on this icon and enter the email address and password you specified during installation, then click <Login>,

Now that you are logged in you will notice that the LastPass icon has turned red,

Adding a Site to LastPass

Adding new sites to your LastPass account is both easy and secure. Since all sensitive data is encrypted locally on your computer with the key that only you know before it is sent to LastPass, you can store your most sensitive data with the knowledge that is it is completely safe.

The easiest and best way to add new sites to LastPass is to simply go to a site and login as you typically would,

Once you have logged in LastPass will give you the option to,

• Save Site
• Never Save This Site
• Not Now

Click on <Save Site>,

An Add LastPass Site pop-up will appear where you can enter details about this site.

You can group your sites, eg Email, Finance.. make it a Favourite, reprompt for a password and auto-login. All of these options can be re-configured at any point.

Click <Save Site>,

The next time you visit this site LastPass will automatically fillout your username and password. This will be apparent by the red LastPass outline around those fields.

Alternatively, if you enable AutoLogin.. everytime you visit that site LastPass will log you in straight away.

Just repeat this process everytime you visit your favourite sites and LastPass will remember your login details.

My LastPass Vault

My LastPass Vault is a page that allows you to see and manage all of your saved sites.

Click on the LastPass icon in your toolbar, then My LastPass Vault,

Your sites are organised by groups with your Favourites at the top for easy access. You are also provided with Edit, Share and Delete links for each site,

There are also visual indicators if this site has an associated note, requires password reprompt, or will autologin.

If you click on the name of the site, LastPass will open its url in a new tab or window and autologin using your stored username and password.

You can also search for your saved sites by using the search form,

If you are not at a computer that has the LastPass plugin installed, you can access an online version of your vault by logging into https://lastpass.com.

LastPass Secure Notes

LastPass Secure Notes allow you to store private information safely and securely.

Some examples of data that you might save in a secure note may include bank account numbers, social security numbers of your family members, passport numbers, combinations to safes, etc.

Since all sensitive data is encrypted locally on your computer with the key that only you know before it is sent to LastPass, you can store your most sensitive data with the knowledge that is it is completely safe.

Just like all of your LastPass data, your Secure Notes will be available from any location with an Internet connection.

To add a Secure Note, click on the LastPass toolbar icon, click on the Secure Notes menu item and choose Add Secure Note,

After they are added, all of your Secure Notes will be shown in a list under this menu item.

Multiple Logins for a Particular Site

If you have several logins for a site that you would like to save in LastPass, simply log into each account as you normally would. LastPass will recognise when a new username/password combination has been entered and will prompt you to save this new account.

The next time you visit the site, LastPass will show the notification bar with options to AutoFill and AutoLogin . Just click on the login you want to use for that site,

LastPass Form Fill

Using LastPass to store the data you typically have to type into forms is both easy and secure.

Your data is encrypted locally on your computer with the key that only you know before it is sent to LastPass so you can store your credit card, phone number, etc. with the knowledge that not even LastPass can see it.

It is completely safe.

To access this click on the LastPass icon in the toolbar, then Fill Forms, then Add Profile,

And fill out all the form details you would like to save,

When you come across a form that needs to be filled out online click on the LastPass icon in the toolbar, then Fill Forms, then choose the form profile you want to use.. then Fill Form,

The online form will automatically be filled out with your saved information,

LastPass Identities

LastPass Identities allows you to create different views into your LastPass account. This is most commonly used to hide some of your sites when you log into LastPass from a particular location, eg a home and a work identity.

Another potential use of Identities is to have separate identities for each member of your house. This is an easy way for multiple people to share a single LastPass account, but separate their sites. This will allow each person to go to Gmail and it will know who to login as.

To create a new LastPass Identity, click on the LastPass icon in the toolbar, then Identities, then Add Identity,

You then assign which sites, secure notes, and form fill profiles are visible for this Identity by dragging and dropping items from one list to another.

To use a particular identity, simply select the Identity name in the menu (as shown in the image). This image indicates that the home Identity is currently being used. LastPass will remember this setting for all subsequent logins into LastPass.

LastPass Site Sharing

Sharing allows you to share a particular login with another person without exposing the password. This has uses in many scenarios, but the two most common are:

• You would like to allow a family member access to a website
• You are in a work situation where the company has a login into a 3rd party site

To share a site, open the My LastPass Vault page and click on the Share link next to the site you wish to share,

In the sharing dialog box, enter the email of the person that you would like to share this site, then click <Share>,

If the user has a LastPass account, they will receive an email indicating they have received a share. The next time they log in they will see the shared site listed under the New Pending Share Offers group,

If the user does not have a LastPass account, they will be given an opportunity to create an account so they can receive the shared account.

After accepting the share, you can log into that site the same way you log into all of your other LastPass sites, but you will not be able to view the password.

Favourites

LastPass allows you to classify some sites as Favourites. In addition to their normal grouping, they will also be shown in the Favorites group which is at the top of your My LastPass Vault page for easy access,

You can choose the Open Favourites toolbar option to open and log into all of your favourite sites at once. This is often helpful if you find yourself always checking email, opening your financial site and logging into a social networking site first thing in the morning. All of this can be accomplished with a single click of Open Favourites,

To make one of your sites a favourite, you can click on the Make This a Favourite checkbox when you first add the site to LastPass. If you wish to make a site a favourite after it has been added, you can Edit the site by opening the My LastPass Vault page from the toolbar, finding the site in the list and clicking on the Edit link.

Linked Sites

In some work environments, it is not unusual that you have many accounts tied to the same password. You change your password in one location, but then you will have to change each site saved in LastPass manually.

This is the exact scenario that Linked Sites is for,

When a password change is detected for a domain that you have several sites saved, LastPass will prompt you if you would also like to change the saved password for all of your other LastPass sites for that domain.

For more information on LastPass have a look at their FAQs.

Just remember to choose a really strong master password for LastPass.. and change it every now and then.

I have personally found LastPass to be a brilliant tool that I can’t live without.

One password to rule them all!

Related posts:

1. The Hootsuite Guide to Managing Multiple Twitter Profiles
2. Managing your online Identity
3. Really Simple RSS Guide
4. A Guide to Delicious Social Bookmarking
5. A guide to Facebook security settings
6. How to add Google Friend Connect to WordPress
7. uTorrent Setup Guide