Email is an incredibly useful tool, but if it doesn't have the right level of security, it can completely expose a user's digital life. Two bad habits are common these days: storing accounts and passwords inside email for convenience, and ignoring messages from online services that contain full credentials. The Dashlane Inbox Scan tool lets you see all of these and provides a detailed report to fix issues immediately.
Why Keeping Passwords in Your Inbox Is a Bad Idea
I've heard it more times than I'd like to admit: I have a copy of the password saved in my email. I understand it's hard to explain to the average user everything that's wrong with that practice, but we still have to try. Centralizing passwords isn't dangerous as long as it's done properly. The ideal place for that is a local password manager like KeePass, because they also let you generate passwords you don't have to remember. In contrast, concentrating passwords inside your email is exactly what a malicious attacker wants. If an attacker manages to get past your email's security and access its contents, all stored accounts and passwords become vulnerable.
How Dashlane Inbox Scan Works
One of the problems is how hard it is to spot something like this. For example, my email is quickly approaching four thousand messages. Who can identify a potential security breach in all that chaos? That's where Dashlane Inbox Scan comes in. The service is run by Dashlane, the company that also offers a password manager compatible with Windows, OS X, iOS, and Android. It asks for temporary permission to scan your email, identifies the most vulnerable points, and presents a report in PDF format. Dashlane's servers keep the collected information for a maximum of six hours, a detail stated in their privacy policies.
In my case, the percentage Dashlane Inbox Scan gave me was decent, but it still alerted me to what appears to be my favorite password. What the service doesn't know is that that password is assigned to very low-priority services and doesn't pose a direct risk. The rest is exactly where it should be: far from my email. Dashlane Inbox Scan works with Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail (some errors have been reported under Hotmail) and AOL. Don't miss trying it.
