How to use Dashlane to find out how secure you are

Watch this video walkthrough to learn how to use the Security Dashboard:

How to become more secure online (video)

Note: the Security Dashboard is only available on Windows and MacOS.

A new and completely re-designed Security Dashboard

To help you be more secure and protect your digital life, we have completely redesigned and rebuilt our Security Dashboard from scratch. Now when you open Dashlane, you get a clear and instant Security Score, that will help you become aware of any flaws that may exist in your accounts and that could compromise your Internet identity.

Already have Dashlane installed on your computer and missed it? Click here to open it directly before reading any further!

Note that the Security Dashboard is only available on Windows and Mac OS X for now.

Your Security Score

In the “Security Dashboard”, you can find your Security Score which is calculated by our own algorithm, giving a higher priority to the web sites that are important in your digital life or that are often targeted by people who want to steal sensitive and personal information.

If your bank account password is weak or has been reused on another website, it will obviously have a high impact on your Security Score. But having weak or reused passwords on your Facebook or Twitter account, or even on e-commerce web sites that often save your credit card number, is also crucial in your Secure Score.

Keep in mind that using a password more than once is actually very dangerous and risky. This is one of the main reasons people often get several of their web accounts stolen in a few minutes. The easiest way to prevent that is to use Dashlane to generate a new and unique password for each web account.

The best advice we can give you

We will help you use your Security Score and take action immediately by displaying our best security tips right under your score. Check this section often and try to increase your score! It will definitely improve your overall Internet experience and you will stay safe from most of the security problems that happen on the Internet.

If you already see less than three security tips under your score, then you are well on your way to being 100% secure!

To start improving your Security Score, you have 2 options :

• Use Password changer.
• Click on “Replace Now” to instantly take action, by changing your password on that website.

We also take into account other actions that help you be more secure online, for example:

• Enabling Two-Factor Authentication to add an extra layer of security for your Dashlane account
• Deleting passwords that are stored insecurely in your browsers (did you know that anyone who opens your Chrome browser can see all the passwords you have saved inside?)
• And many other security features

Understanding the full analysis of your passwords

You will notice five different tabs that give you even more control over your security. The number in the circle lets you know how many passwords in this group you have. Click on this number to display the related information.

In these five sections and for all your credentials, you will find:

• The website & your login
• The password strength
• The age of the password and the number of times it has been reused (please note that you might need to expand the window to see that information)
• The safety level of your password (whether it would be easy to work out or not)
• How to take action 

Find below details on each section:

All Accounts

Use the main panel to have an overall view of the passwords you use.

Weak Passwords

This tab filters all your passwords to show only the ones that are considered unsafe. This could be because they are too short, or they do not have a combination of numbers, uppercase and lowercase letters that makes it secure.

Basically, it means that your current password could be easily worked out by someone else, and we strongly recommend you change it.

If a website does not let you have a stronger password for your account (for example, if they do not let you enter special characters) or you do not want to change it, then you can mark that website as checked. To do that, simply click on the Dashlane shield. The website will then appear in the “All account” section.

Please note that on Mac OS X, you will have to expand the window if you wish to enable the option to mark passwords as checked.

Reused Passwords

Reusing a password on multiple websites is very risky, and clearly a mistake when it comes to security on social networks or important websites. Now you can see instantly all the websites where you need to go and generate a new password for as soon as possible. The duplicate status is applied only if a password is reused three times or more (not for passwords used once or twice).

In this list, you may see some international websites that have only one user database (which means you have only one account on all these websites), but several different websites depending on where you live. For instance, amazon.com, amazon.fr, amazon.co.uk and amazon.de are considered to be different websites even though you use the same password on all of them. Taking this into account, Dashlane lets you mark these websites as checked.

Once you've marked this as checked, the website will still appear in that section (because your password has not changed and it is still used on multiple websites) but it will not be counted anymore at the top of the panel.

Old passwords

Here, you will find all passwords that are at least a few months old. By changing your passwords on a regular basis, you can be sure that if someone was to get access to one of your passwords one way or another, this password would soon become obsolete. 

Compromised passwords

Here you will find all the websites who have recently had a security breach.

You should definitely change all your passwords in this section! It means that someone stole many passwords from each of these websites, and that your password may be one of them. If that is the case, your login info may not be secret anymore at all, so you need to change it as soon as possible! It is even more urgent if your password is reused somewhere else, because these persons may already be trying to access your other accounts.

Start improving your security

• Using the action column

Click on “Replace Now” in the action column to open the website and change your password, or click on “Auto-replace now” if Password Changer is available for this website.

• Seeing the credential details in Dashlane

To open the details of a credential from the Security Dashboard, double-click on “Website & Login” in the row.

What is the 10% from deleting unencrypted passwords in browsers for?

This will actually delete the passwords that you have saved in your browsers. You won’t lose them, because they are now stored in Dashlane. It’s not safe keeping your passwords saved in your browser because they are unencrypted here and easy to steal.