Help with LastPass, Free Version

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Hi Loungers,

I changed my master password for LastPass on Firefox, Windows 7 a few weeks ago. Since then, I can’t get into LastPass on Chrome, iPad or iPhone. My new password works on none of them nor can I recover my account as Account Recovery fails on both desktop browsers.

Question: If I delete and reinstall LastPass on Chrome and/or devices, will it remove it from Firefox?

For now, I check Firefox’s LastPass when I need a password … inconvenient to be sure but better than losing all passwords in my several years old LastPass vault!

Hope a kind helper can answer this question for me.

Thanks in advance,

Linda

P.S. Hadn’t realized until all this started that LastPass is now part of Microsoft … not a good thing. Maybe the solution is to revert to Dashlane which I used initially? Ha!

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It sounds like you are very close to losing all of your passwords.  I would start by using Firefox and finding a way to print them or write them on paper.  Or try this https://www.wired.com/story/lastpass-how-to-export-your-data-and-leave/

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I’d suggest once data has been recovered and extracted, move over to keepass as a replacement PWManager.
https://keepass.info/
works offline or online also portable with high encryption and free.

[Moderator edit] do not paste HTML code, it makes posts extremely difficult to read. Edited to remove HTML.

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I’m no longer a LastPass user, so can’t help with why it works on one browser and not the others, but the very first thing you need to do is IMMEDIATELY export all your passwords for safekeeping before you mess things up further. It sounds like you can still get into your password vault in the Firefox extension, so go to Account Options->Advanced->Export->LastPass CSV file. Youll probably be asked for your master password, but hopefully either your new password or your old password will still work here.

As I mentioned, I used to be a LastPass user, but switched several years ago when they were bought by LogMeIn, a company with a sketchy record. I was even more concerned when they were resold to a private equity firm two years ago, and I quickly moved all my friends and family to BitWarden.

I tend to be the paranoid type, so personally I like KeePass because I can keep it under my own control and it doesn’t sync to the cloud. I also like that it can double as my 2FA authenticator (ala, Google Authenticator and the like), so I can keep everything in one place.

However, KeePass is a geeky program and not for everyone. I would never recommend it to my family members. For them, there’s no denying the convenience of LastPass or BitWarden. Both operate similarly, and BitWarden can easily import your LastPass CSV file to make switching a lot easier.

Whether you continue to use LastPass or switch to BitWarden, make sure you always have a local, unencrypted copy of your password database in case anything happens to you and your family needs to take over things. It doesn’t help if it’s encrypted and your spouse or kids are tech-challenged, so I prefer to leave it unencrypted and secure it the same way you would secure other important documents, such as your passport or bank account information. You could put a paper printout or a USB thumb-drive in a bank safe deposit box, or some similar strategy.

 

2 users thanked author for this post.

wavy, DriftyDonN

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All good advice above.

I switched from the free version to the paid Premium version of LastPass (LP) a few years ago, and it works on all of my devices.   I suspect that the challenges mentioned in the initial post stem from this — in early 2021, they notified users that the free version would  work only on desktop OR mobile devices, not both.  Of course, that would cause some free users to convert to the paid version.  I believe that free users were also switched to very limited tech support.

By the way, LP was a private company for some time, then in 2015 LP was acquired by a company called LogMeIn which is owned by some private equity funds.  LogMeIn offers several other products  (such as GoToMeeting, GoToWebinar)  that are not related to LP.  Those funds have decided to spin out LP as a separate independent company, so they may be preparing to sell LP, but that has not happened yet as far as I know.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LastPass

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It sounds as if your problem is connected to the announcement that LastPass made in February, 2021 that, beginning in summer 2021, users of the free version would have to choose to use it on either computers or mobile devices — but not both. The announcement can be found here: https://blog.lastpass.com/2021/02/changes-to-lastpass-free/

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