Face it: Your passwords have been stolen. Time to get a digital manager
Pardon the interruption, but your passwords are leaking.
You’ve probably become numb to all the headlines about data breaches. But a website called haveibeenpwned.com will expose the horror they’ve wreaked on you.
Type in your email address and haveibeenpwned lists websites and apps where your own passwords have been compromised. (“Pwned,” pronounced like owned, is geek speak for conquered.) Try your family members’ emails and your favorite passwords, too. An Australian security guru named Troy Hunt spends his days looking in dark corners of the internet to add hacked data to this free site. It now totals half a billion exposed passwords and 5 billion hacked accounts. Hunt can hardly keep up.
Aside from freaking out, what are you supposed to do?
We’ve gotten a lot of hard-tofollow password advice over the years. Change them every 90 days. Make them really long. Add in rAnDoM #@s! Hunt’s site proves one rule is more important than all the others in a world where breaches are unavoidable: Never, ever reuse a password.
It makes sense, if you think like a hacker. When they get their grubby paws on a password from one site, they go and try it on other sites. If you’ve used that password somewhere else, the bad guys could also have access to your email, your bank account ... your life.
Sure, but we now use dozens of websites, maybe hundreds. My brain can’t hold that many passwords. People try all kinds of unwieldy tricks to stay on top of passwords: Post-its or a notebook are easy to lose, hard to update, and often not around when you need them. Saving passwords in email, Word documents or spreadsheets is not very secure.
There is a better way. Most security gurus I know use a password manager. It’s a program that keeps all your passwords in one digital safety deposit box. Aside from being the memory you wish you had, a password manager will save you time by typing in passwords for you across many different devices. And fresh updates are making these programs simpler and more useful than ever.
After testing password managers that work across browsers RATING PASSWORD MANAGERS
■ Dashlane without the cloud.
Price: Free to use on one Dislikes: It’s more complicated. device; $3.33 per month, billed Security measures prevent annually, to sync your data auto-filling and autosubmitting across multiple devices. passwords without Likes: Simple, slick design. an additional click. Cannot Offers live chat support Monday auto-change passwords. through Friday in addition to email support every day. Saves receipts for online purchases.
Dislikes: Most expensive option, and no discounted family plan.
■ 1Password
Price: Free trial for 30 days; $3/ month.
Likes: Strong reputation for security. Comes with pro-level controls, including the ability to sync passwords across devices ■ LastPass
Price: Free to use, including syncing; $2/month adds features including sharing passwords.
Likes: The best free option, covers most of what you need. Can store encrypted files in notes, such as PDFs.
Dislikes: Has encountered the most high-profile breaches and bugs, though it responded to them quickly.
ciate the personal touch, said Allison Ausband, Delta’s senior vice president of in-flight service. Delta aims to have those personal interactions with about 20 travelers per flight, either in conversations or through postcards flight attendants can hand-deliver. Priority goes to those who had some type of disruption on a recent flight, such as a lengthy delay.
“They want us to know them and know what’s happening to them when they’re doing business with us,” Ausband said.
For now, most of the passenger information flight attendants can access to personalize in-flight service is the sort of thing airlines already track, like frequent flier status, or details included in every booking, like a passenger’s date of birth and connecting flight.
But both Delta and United said they’re experimenting with adding additional information, such as food and beverage preferences.
“The trick to all of this is how to provide good, relevant information that’s easy to use and doesn’t get in the way of their primary job of safety and service,” said Linda Jojo, United’s chief digital officer.
Southwest Airlines is testing a similar program that would help customer service agents spot “key customers” at the gate, where they can try to resolve a problem or just wish the passenger a happy birthday, spokesman Dan Landson said.
Giving flight attendants and gate agents access to that information wasn’t practical until they began carrying mobile devices that do double duty, accepting payments for in-flight purchases and tracking which passengers are entitled to perks like a drink or meal, said Robert Mann, a New York-based airline industry consultant.
At United, those devices also can issue immediate compensation for in-flight issues like a broken entertainment system. Options can include free food or drink, frequent flier miles or another form of credit, Jojo said.
Airlines also say they’re trying to strike a balance between a welcome personal touch and getting a little too personal. What one traveler considers great service, another might find invasive.
“No one wants to feel like they have Big Brother watching us,” said Scot Hornick, partner at consulting firm Oliver Wyman.
That’s less of a concern with data-driven programs that aren’t as visible but still have an impact passengers can feel — literally, in the case of one tool Delta developed for its pilots.
The app provides information about weather hazards like turbulence, lightning or hail that’s more accurate and easier to interpret than pilots used to be able to get after takeoff, said Tom Staigle, Delta’s chief technical pilot.
Even if a plane’s crew doesn’t adjust its route to avoid turbulence, knowing when to expect it helps prevent injuries and limits the amount of time passengers must be seated with belts fastened, Staigle said.
Other carriers say they’re mining data on aircraft damage and worker injuries.
Efforts to analyze causes of preventable aircraft damage, like collisions with vehicles at the airport, might not sound like something a passenger should care about. But that kind of damage often results in a cancellation unless the airline can quickly swap in another airplane, which still typically involves a delay, Mann said.
“It’s very expensive and disruptive and entirely preventable,” he said.
United began working on a data visualization initiative in 2015 with interns from the University of New Haven’s criminal justice program. The students had been working on projects like mapping spheres of influence of gangs in Mexico or criminal activity in West Haven, Conn.
But Michael Quiello, United’s vice president of corporate safety, said he saw that the same techniques could be used to help the airline’s corporate safety team tackle employee injuries and aircraft damage. The goal: Link all information related to those incidents and present it visually in a way that makes it easy for employees to spot clusters of incidents or links connecting them.