LastPass Firefox menu

The program is called LastPass and has a free and a paid version, but as usual, the free version is good enough for the average user. LastPass consists of plugins for IE, Firefox, Safari and other mobile browsers (you heard that right, LastPass is available for Android, Blackberry and iPhone, but you have to get the Premium version that will cost you 12 $ per year, which frankly is a bargain).

What can LastPass do for you?

• sync passwords between browsers and computers
• encrypts existing passwords which means more security if your laptop or PC is stolen
• import/export and backup of passwords
• can generate stronger passwords for you
• can help you organize passwords depending on groups of websites
• can auto login you in selected websites
• it can help you complete forms online as it stores multiple profiles that are accessible at a click of a button

All you need to do is download LastPass, install it, login into your account on the browsers/computers you want to sync passwords between and you’re set and only prompted to remember passwords when you access a new website not found in LastPass database.

Below there’s a short video describing the basic features of LastPass:

LastPass prouds itself that will only make you remember one password, that will unlock/lock all your passwords securely in one place. The problem that I find is that it’s not yet available for Chrome and Opera, two browsers that I use constantly. But that’s hardly a problem and I’m sure it will be fixed soon.

I’m using LastPass for a few weeks already and I’m lovin’ it as it does what it’s supposed to do, without hassle for me. I highly recommend it.

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I, for myself, an early Vista adopter (since Release Candidate 2, if I remember well), as I’m always liked new things and as Windows XP was on the market for a long time I’ve wanted something else. But even now, after two years of using Vista I’m still confused sometimes when faced with simple tasks, like File Sharing without a password, which I needed a few days ago and just yesterday I’ve managed to do it right.

So, let’s see what I wanted to do and what stopped me: I have a desktop and a laptop and I was trying to share some files in order to copy them from one PC to another. I’ve browsed to the folder I was going to share, right clicked on it, selected Share and added Everyone as a Reader to the permissions list. Nice and easy, but when I tried to access that computer I was prompted for an user and password, which I didn’t set up anywhere else so end of the road for me.

Yesterday I’ve had a breaktrough, and let’s see what I did in a few easy to follow steps.

Step 1. Left click on the network icon in System Tray (highlighted with red) and you get the picture below.

Step 2. Select Network and Sharing Center, that opens the picture below.

Step 3. Select Passwork protected sharing (underlinded with red in the picture above) and turn it off. That’s all. 

What it does it allows users to connect to your folders without requesting for an username and password. If it’s turned on, in order to view/modify files in shared folders you have to know an username and password that has rights on the computer that shares the files. Usernames with blank passwords don’t work, as the system requires a password.

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Easy you say: use the retrieve password by email function provided by WordPress! This should always work, but there are some situations when it doesn’t: your email account cannot be accessed for some reason, you changed the username and don’t remember which is it, you gaved admin rights to a guest blogger and it changed your password (that’s a really silly thing to do).

So, let’s see the “magic” method I’ve thought of. First you have to have access to your SQL database, with admin rights. Now let’s see the steps:

1. Create another WordPress blog (on a subdomain of the original blog, on shared hosting account or even on your local PC)
2. Create an account and set a password
3. Login to that blog’s SQL database (you can use PHP MyAdmin)
4. Browse the wp_users table and look for the user_pass field corresponding to the admin user. You won’t recognize the password you typed as it’s encrypted.
5. Copy the string
6. Login to the SQL database (usually your host provides access to PHP MyAdmin) of the blog you’ve lost the password
7. Browse the wp_users table and change the user_pass original field to the copied value at Step 5 (at this step you’ll also see the username/usernames accounts of the blog)
   
8. Go back to your blog and login with the username to which you’ve changed the password (use the clead password, not the encrypted string).

The wizard above can also be applied to any website that uses MySQL to store users and passwords, provided that you duplicate the platform (so that the passwords are encrypted the same way).

If you have any questions or comments, don’t hesitate to contact me.

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