Password Health measures how secure and robust your passwords are across your accounts, whether you're using a personal plan or are part of a Dashlane professional plan. Everyone receives a Password Health score out of 100 if they have at least five logins saved in their account. The stronger your Password Health score, the less likely you are to become a victim of hackers and cyberattacks.
On your Dashlane Password Health page, you’ll see which passwords need to be updated immediately and receive recommendations to improve your Password Health score instantly. If you add a new password or update an existing one, we check whether it has been leaked immediately, so you might see that your login is flagged as compromised even before you save it in your Dashlane Vault. Then we'll update the Password Health dashboard if the password is saved.
We designed Password Health to help you focus on protecting your most critical accounts first, like banking, email, shopping, health, and social media.
The best way to ensure that only you have access to your private data is to create complex, unique passwords for each account. You also need to change passwords that are compromised in a breach or hack immediately.
If you're a professional plan admin, you can check plan members' Dashlane security scores.
Manage Password Health for your organization
Open and access the Password Health page
Open and access the Password Health page in the web app
Your total password count is based on all your logins stored in Dashlane, with weights given to your critical accounts and compromised, reused, and weak passwords. Excluded passwords aren’t taken into account.
- Select the Dashlane D icon in your browser’s toolbar and enter your Master Password if prompted. Then in the extension pop-up, select Open the web app.
- From the Tools section, select Password Health.
- Select each tab to filter by Compromised, Reused, or Weak, or select All to view them all in one list.
If you’re a member of a professional plan and have the Spaces feature, you can select your Personal Space or Business Space in the left side menu to see separate scores for each. You can also select All Spaces to see a score for both combined.
You can also see if a password is compromised, reused, or weak when Dashlane autofills your logins. When you go to a website's login page, you'll see that information in the pop-up where you select the login to autofill, as well as on the pop-up to replace or save a new login.
Members of organizations with Credential Protection will also get security alerts, also called Credential Risk Alerts and Notifications:
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We’ll send you a Slack message when you have compromised, weak, or reused passwords for any login stored in your Dashlane vault. You’ll only get these messages if your organization has set up these Risk Notifications for Slack.
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When Dashlane autofills the login for you to log in to a website with a compromised password, you’ll also see a Credential Risk Alert advising you to change it. The Credential Risk Alerts are on by default and don’t have to be set up by the plan admin like the ones for Slack.
What should I do when I get a Credential Risk Alert when autofilling?
Open and access the Password Health page in the Android app
Your total password count doesn't include excluded logins, but empty logins are counted.
- Open the Dashlane mobile app and enter your Master Password if prompted.
- Select the menu icon, shown as three horizontal lines.
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In the Tools section, select Password Health.
If you haven't added any logins, you won't have a Password Health score, and you'll be prompted to add logins.
- Select Explore on the Password Health screen to see your score broken down by category.
If you’re a member of a professional plan and have the Spaces feature, you’ll see the Spaces icon, shown as a cube, at the top of the side menu. Select Change space to choose which score to view: your Personal Space, Business Space, or both. After you select a Space, select Password Health in the side menu again.
Open and access the Password Health page in the iPhone app
Your total password count doesn't include excluded and empty logins.
- Open the Dashlane iPhone app and enter your Master Password if prompted.
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Select Tools in the bottom menu and then Password Health.
If you haven't added any logins, you won't have a Password Health score, and you'll be prompted to add logins.
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On the Password Health screen, scroll down to see your score broken down by category. Select See all to expand a category.
Open and access the Password Health page on the iPad or macOS app
Your total password count doesn't include excluded and empty logins.
- Open the Dashlane iPad or macOS app and enter your Master Password if prompted.
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From the Tools section in the left menu, select Password Health.
If you haven't added any logins, you won't have a Password Health score, and you'll be prompted to add logins.
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On the Password Health page, scroll down to see your score broken down by category. Select See all to expand a category.
If you’re a member of a professional plan and have the Spaces feature, this page displays the combined score of your Personal and Business Space by default. To see your Personal or Business Space score, select the Spaces icon, shown as a cube.
Understand your Password Health score
Dashlane identifies which critical accounts you need to secure first when any of your accounts are deemed at risk. Critical accounts include banking, email, shopping, health, and social media. Cybercriminals are most likely to target these accounts, so they should always be your top priority.
Your Password Health score increases when you update compromised, weak, or reused passwords. But your score is most affected by the status of the passwords that protect your critical accounts.
Select each tab to filter by Compromised, Reused, or Weak, or select All to view them in one list. You need at least five logins you haven’t excluded to have a Password Health score.
Password Health categories
Compromised passwords
If a login is impacted by a data breach, found in a list of leaked passwords, or found on the dark web using our Dark Web Monitoring tool, it’s compromised. Dashlane sends a security alert in the Dashlane app if the breach occurred after the password was last changed.
If you add a new password or update an existing one, we immediately check whether it has been leaked in the dark web, so you might see that your login is flagged as compromised. Then we'll update the Password Health dashboard if the password is saved.
Dashlane also checks whether your other accounts use the same or similar passwords as the compromised accounts. If so, those passwords are considered compromised as well.
We strongly encourage you to change any compromised passwords as soon as possible and never use the password again. You can use Dashlane's Password Generator to generate a new and unique password or passphrase for each compromised account.
Generate a password or passphrase using Dashlane
What do I do if I receive an alert about a password?
Weak passwords
Cybercriminals who steal your data aren't trying to figure out your passwords—their computers are. They may gain your passwords by automating brute-force attacks, a hacking method that uses trial and error to determine passwords.
If one of your passwords could be easily worked out by someone else, Dashlane considers it weak.
Dashlane judges the strength of passwords against over 30,000 of the most common passwords, dictionary words, names, keyboard patterns, dates, and more. The open-source method Dashlane uses is called “ZXCVBN."
ZXCVBN is the algorithm behind most password strength meters you see when you create new passwords. The algorithm looks for patterns that cybercriminals might use to guess your password. Your password receives a score from 0 to 4, with 4 being the strongest. If your password gets a score of 2 or lower, it's considered weak and easy for someone to figure out.
Test the strength of passwords
We recommend that you use Dashlane's Password Generator to create the strongest password or passphrase each website will allow.
Reused passwords
Some people reuse or introduce small variations of the same password for different accounts. Using a password more than once is one of the main reasons people have multiple online accounts broken into at once.
Your Password Health score is lowered if any of your passwords are identical or too similar. The more reused passwords, the lower your score.
Dashlane uses a measure of difference called "Levenshtein distance" with a limit of three to ensure your passwords are meaningfully different. How many edits does it take to turn one password into another by deleting, inserting, or switching a character?
Example: If one password is Password123! and another is password123, only two characters are changed. The Levenshtein distance is two. The passwords are considered similar and reused.
We recommend you use Dashlane's Password Generator to generate a new and unique password or passphrase for each of your accounts.
Exclude passwords from your score
You can exclude passwords you don’t want included in your Password Health score. You might exclude a password for these reasons:
- Someone shared the password with you, so you can’t change it
- The password’s website doesn’t allow for a more secure password
Web app
To exclude a password in the web app, select the exclude icon in the login row, shown as a circle with a line through it. To see a list of your excluded logins, select the Excluded tab. To remove a login from the excluded list, select the include icon in the login's row, shown as a circular arrow.
Mobile apps
To exclude a login in the mobile apps, select the 3-dot menu next to the login and select Exclude. To view the excluded list, scroll to the Excluded section. To remove a login from the list, select the 3-dot menu next to the login, and select Include.
Common questions
How does Dashlane calculate my Password Health score with passwords that only I can see?
Dashlane calculates Password Health scores using an algorithm that works silently in the background of each person’s Dashlane account. Dashlane is built on the principle of zero knowledge to ensure that only you have access to your Dashlane vault. Your score is computed on your device. Our server doesn't have access to your login details.
FAQ about security at Dashlane
Read about Dashlane's security and compliance at trust.Dashlane.com
Does Dashlane see my password when it checks the Dark Web?
No. We use a method known as hashing to check for leaks without the server ever seeing the full password. We can use a hash function to turn the password into a hash, but not to turn the hash back into the original password. In other words, we can produce a unique set of characters that represent the password without revealing it.
On our servers, we identify all the hashed passwords on our list that begin the same way as your hashed password. We create a new list of potential matches for your password. We send this list, which usually has thousands of hashed passwords, back to the device where you signed in to Dashlane. On your device, we compare the full hash of your password with the list of hashes from the leaked passwords.
How do duplicate logins impact the Password Health score?
If Dashlane detects a password is used for more than one login, the passwords are marked as Reused. Reused passwords negatively impact the Password Health score.
Dashlane recommends using a different, strong password for each account.
Generate a password or passphrase using Dashlane
If you use the same username and password for different services that share the same account, you can link them together.
How can I improve my Password Health score?
To get a 100 on your Password Health score and secure your accounts, update all your Compromised, Reused, or Weak passwords. Use Dashlane to generate more secure, unique passwords for each account.
Generate a password or passphrase using Dashlane
When you make changes to your password, a Dashlane pop-up appears. We ask if you want to update the login with this new password or create a new login for this website.
What else can I do to keep my account secure?
Creating strong, unique passwords and passphrases and securely storing them will help prevent cybercriminals from easily accessing your logins. You can also take additional steps to ensure your digital security. Check out this article to learn more: