Password Management: Moving On

Because I work on more than one computer (although not terribly often), a password manager application seems like a must so that I'm not forgetting and having to reset 6,000 passwords every time I travel, etc.

For several years, my password manager of choice has been LastPass (yes, I know they had a "data breach" a little while back, but they claim that no actual passwords were lost, and I've had no e.g. hacks seemingly connected to using it or anything like that).

But, starting a few days ago, I started having a real problem with LastPass. It wouldn't recognize my "master password" so that I could log in and use the application.

Was I forgetting my password? No. That's one of the few that I keep written down on a piece of paper.

Was I mis-typing my password? I typed very carefully. No dice.

But then a few minutes later, I tried again and logged in successfully.

This happened a couple of times, and I was about half convinced that my fingers were spazzing out and I was making typing errors.

So, by way of testing that theory, I changed the master password, wrote it down, and (unsafely, I know) stored a straight paste of the password in a text file on my hard drive.

Next time I went to log in, I pasted the new password in. No dice. Again. Nope. Five minutes later, hey, it works.

I can't have a password-protected app that randomly recognizes or doesn't recognize its own password. Especially when that app is where I store all my other passwords. So I'm trying out Dashlane as a replacement.