A brilliant way to keep your passwords safe--or the ultimate prize for malicious hackers?
Software startup Dashlane and other companies want to better your online security through systems that can automatically change your passwords on a regular basis.
The French-American company announced its acquisition of PassOmatic today, Reuters reported. A startup based in New York, PassOmatic has the automatic password-switching technology that Dashlane needed to incorporate into its own password management service.
Dashlane generates a "strong and unique" password in just a few clicks, and its Password Changer service works with more than 50 sites in the U.S., including Amazon, eBay, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, PayPal, Twitter and Yahoo.
"Password Changer is the antidote for future Heartbleeds," Emmanuel Schalit, CEO of Dashlane, said in a statement, referring to a devastating vulnerability in Internet code discovered earlier this year. "The ability to automatically change passwords is revolutionary. It provides users a highly effective way to stay safe from increasingly common security breaches on the scale of Heartbleed."
Dashlane, which has three million users on its current service, has planned a feature that will automatically update passwords every 30 days or at other timed intervals selected by the user. Password Changer can also switch up passwords if accounts are compromised.
"We are making passwords go away from the perspective of the consumer, without doing away with passwords from a technical perspective," Schalit told Reuters.
Users can sign up for the beta version of the service here. Dashlane's system will be free for a single device, but password management across multiple devices will require a subscription fee of $39.99 a year.
Of course, the Password Change system itself calls for the question of whether or not it can be compromised. It would be a woeful day for users if hackers found a way into the system and changed all their passwords, locking them out of Facebook, Twitter, PayPal, online shopping accounts and more.
Some experts say that passwords are on their way out and will be eventually replaced by systems that can read your fingerprints, but that day is still far in the future.
In an Internet of things world, more devices have wireless connection, making them vulnerable to hacking. Perhaps Dashlane or a similar company will someday make a system that can provide online security for your thermostat or self-driving car.
See Now: OnePlus 6: How Different Will It Be From OnePlus 5?
