If you thought Heartbleed was bad, one of the standout tech trends of 2015 is expected to be bigger and bolder online attacks — which means that consumers could be spending much of next year changing passwords across an ever-growing number of sites.
However, Dashlane’s new Password Changer service, launched in beta last week, automates the process of visiting, logging into and changing the password details on multiple websites.
Some studies put the average number of web accounts that a consumer holds at 27 while for many younger web natives, that number could be closer to 100 divided across social media, online retailers, financial institutions, web mail services and hotel booking sites.
And with so many accounts and login details to juggle, perhaps it’s not surprising that when the Heartbleed vulnerability was uncovered in April, a flaw that affected many of the world’s most popular web destinations, so few people did the right thing and changed all of their passwords as a precaution. According to the Pew Research Institute, only 36% of those surveyed took action.
“Password Changer is the antidote for future Heartbleeds,” states Emmanuel Schalit, CEO of Dashlane.
“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.”
Although only in beta, the free service already supports 75 major websites including AirBnB, Amazon, Apple, Dropbox, Facebook, Etsy and Evernote, and more sites are being added every day.
The feature is being rolled into Dashlane’s free password manager app that helps users create and remember fiendishly difficult login details and is currently available as a desktop app for the Mac or PC, although a mobile version is already in development.
The new feature is free to use on a single device and is currently available for Mac and PC desktops but a mobile version is also in development. — AFP/Relaxnews 2014
