News

LastPass Offers Two New Increased Security Options

By Austin Krause

Updated May 19, 2021

The popular online security manager LastPass was just updated with new location aware login features. This adds another layer of protection to an already secure service.

When it comes to a password manager that governs all of your secure login credentials, no effort should be spared regarding security. Security is all about layers, the more the better. Sometimes those layers add an inconvenience to the user, but not this time. These new security options in LastPass add a location-based login, and it lets you restrict where logins can be initiated from.

Increased Security for LastPass

To enable the new LastPass security features, open your web browser and login to LastPass.com. From the Control Panel, click the Settings button in the left pane.

On the General tab, you’ll see the two new settings. These settings are location-based login options.

The two settings address IP-based login blocking. LastPass is able to detect which country a connection is being made from, and it allows you to block logins from all countries except for the ones you authorize. Once you check the “Only allow login from selected countries” button, it blocks everywhere but those which you’ve checked. For most of us, we’ll just need to allow one country. But if you travel for business or share your account with someone overseas, it might require allowing several. It won’t stop hackers from using a proxy, but it will make your account a more difficult target to hit.

By default, LastPass also blocks logins made from the anonymous Tor network, unless you’ve used it to login within the last 30 days prior to this update. If you aren’t sure what Tor is, just keep that setting checked.

Note: Every local network on the web has a public outward-facing IP address. No matter if that network consists of just your phone, or a huge network of computers going out through a system of routers. Attached to each IP address is a geo-location that has general information about where the IP address is being used. Any website you visit on the web instantly has access to this information, so it isn’t anything new or scary. And don’t worry, it doesn’t give away your home address. Only your Internet Service Provider has that.

Not long ago MrGroove, aka Steve Krause, posted an article about the benefits of 2-factor authentication. In fact, he mentions it in every podcast episode of the TechGroove podcast whenever security comes up. And rightly so. LastPass offers two-factor authentication, but to make things ever more secure, the service was just updated with two more location-based security features. When combined with two-factor authentication, it makes it nearly unbreakable.