LastPass 4.0

The online vault in LastPass 4.0 has gotten a welcome facelift. Among other things, it now lets you view your saved logins as large tiles rather than in a simple list.

If you hover with the mouse over a saved item, buttons appear that let you launch, edit, share, or delete the item. In this screenshot, I've selected the list view rather than tiles, and I've allowed the left-hand menu its full width.

The password generator appears when you need to enter a new password. It defaults to 12-character passwords using just letters and numbers. I'd prefer a 16-character default that used all character types.

Clicking the new Add button lets you quickly add a new folder, secure note, shared item, or website.

New in this edition, you can set up LastPass to give one or more trusted recipients emergency access to all your passwords. You get an email when the recipient actually requests access; the waiting period lets you cancel that request if you're not actually dead.

From the new Sharing Center you can manage items you've shared with others, optionally revoking the share. You can also view and manage items others have shared with you.

You can create any number of form-filling profiles with personal, address, and contact details, as well as one credit card and one bank account. There's also an option to create additional profiles that each contain just credit card information.

LastPass parses the credit card information for each profile to determine which sort of credit card is involved, then uses that in its display. In testing, it correctly identifies VISA, MasterCard, and American Express numbers.

When LastPass detects an available Web form, it puts a small icon in one of the data fields. Clicking that icon brings up a menu that lets you choose the profile or profiles you want to use.

With the free edition of LastPass, you can enable multifactor authentication using any of several free smartphone apps. You can also print a wallet-sized authentication grid that's unique to each user.

When you run LastPass's security challenge, it rates the strength of all your passwords and also looks for weak, compromised, or outdated passwords. The overall security score also takes into account things like whether you've used multifactor authentication, and restricted mobile access to known mobile devices.

Scroll down the security challenge report for a list of all your passwords, with a security rating for each. For most popular sites, LastPass offers one-click automated password changing. For other sites, you can click to visit the site and update the password manually.