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Don’t Take the Bait — Password Managers Can Help Shield You From Phishing Attacks

  |  Rachael Roth
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If there were a popularity contest for hacking schemes, phishing would win by a landslide. Most commonly in the form of an email, a phishing scheme entices users to click on a malicious link, then leads them to expose personal or business credentials, either by entering them into a fraudulent site or by confirming sensitive information. The email might appear to come from a company the user trusts, or even a friend or coworker—but don’t be fooled by its disguise. 

Phishing is the term for a host of cyberattacks, which can range from spear phishing (targeting individuals or employees) to whale phishing (going after the biggest players in a company, like the CEO of an organization). And while these attacks won’t disappear anytime soon, tools like password managers can act as a buffer and help you detect a scheme before it’s too late. 

Dashlane is the first password manager to offer built-in, proactive phishing alerts,which provides an extra layer of protection in your desktop browser at no additional cost to Dashlane Premium, Friends & Family, Team, and Business subscribers. Learn more about this security-boosting feature.

Password managers can’t be tricked.

Using a password manager like Dashlane makes your overall online experience more secure. The Dashlane browser extension knows exactly which sites you have accounts for, and even if you end up following a malicious link to a site that looks almost exactly like the site you trust, Dashlane won’t be fooled. If you click through to a site and see that Dashlane isn’t suggesting a password, but you know you’ve stored that account in Dashlane, this should be the first indicator that something might be amiss. 

Confirm the email sender as well as the site URL; either might differ ever so slightly (for example there might be an added number or letter, or a capital “i” instead of an “l”) to dupe you into exposing your credentials. 

Get our free phishing guide

Download our free e-book, Phishing 101, to make sure your data doesn’t get caught—hook, line, and sinker.

Got phished anyway? A password manager can still help.

Let’s say you do accidentally turn over personal information in a phishing attack. How can Dashlane help you then? 

Of course, you’ll want to change the password on the account that got hacked, and using Dashlane’s Password Generator makes it simple to create and save a super strong password to replace it. But not only that, Dashlane’s Password Health section will show you which of your accounts are reusing the same passwords, so you can easily see which other accounts are at risk if one was compromised in a phishing attack.

You should always pay attention when entering or confirming personal information, especially if an unexpected text or email has prompted you to do so, but a password manager can provide added security to ward off phishing attacks.

How good are you at detecting phishing schemes? Take the quiz.

Ready to try out a password manager for your business? Sign up for a 14-day trial today.

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