Introduction
On September 24th, ExpressVPN and LastPass announced a brand-new partnership. This partnership gives LastPass Premium and LastPass Family users a 30-day free trial for ExpressVPN, giving users the best of both services at no extra cost to users.
And while this news is surely exciting—more free stuff is always good—it’s important to understand the benefits both services bring to the table. So what exactly do LastPass and ExpressVPN bring to users? Why would these two services partner together?
The Benefits of Password Managers
Let’s kick off this article by talking about LastPass. LastPass is a password manager, a piece of software that stores all of your passwords into a locker—a locker you can access with a master password. But what makes password managers superior to a pen and a piece of paper?
1. Easy to Organize Passwords
For one, password managers make it easy for users to organize their passwords. When a user logs into an account, LastPass will ask them if they’d like to store the account information into the locker. If the user agrees, the account info (the username and password) are placed in a specific category and is easily accessible at any time.
For example, a user’s login information for their online banking account would be placed into the “Finance” section of LastPass. This keeps things organized for users and removes the headache of searching for a specific password.
2. Can Create Strong Passwords
Password managers like LastPass contain password generators. These password generators often allow users to decide how long the password will be, if it will contain special symbols and numbers, and if it’s easy to read.
These generators help users create strong, unique passwords for all of their accounts—an important step in account security.
The Benefits of VPNs
Virtual private networks (VPNs) focus on the data your device or network sends out while in use. For example, if you frequently use a public network, your data is visible to everyone on the network. With a VPN, your data is encrypted. But how is this useful in the real world?
1. Encrypts Your Device and Network
The main feature of VPNs is the encryption they provide to your device and network. Whether you’re on a public network or your private network at home, the data your device sends out is visible, and with the right software, a hacker can easily steal that data and use it against you, for example, in fraud, identity theft and hacks.
VPNs prevent this by masking the IP address of the device sending out data and encrypting the data it sends out. This encryption effectively masks the data as it travels to-and-from your device. The result? A user’s data becomes unreadable and untraceable to everyone, including your internet service provider, government, and neighbors.
2. Easy to Use
Modern VPNs are also extremely easy to use and are quite accessible. When it comes to ExpressVPN, all a user has to do is select which country they want to connect to and click the giant power button in the software. After that, no further input is needed from the user.
What this Partnership Means for User Privacy
But what exactly does the LastPass and ExpressVPN partnership mean for users? Well, ExpressVPN and LastPass are popular pieces of software across the world, but besides the free 30-day trial, what does this partnership bring to the table?
First, let’s take into consideration what has happened here: two titans in the cybersecurity industry have partnered up to bring users more digital privacy. The influence of this cannot be ignored. See, this collaboration will draw attention to the importance of cybersecurity and the need for enhancements within the industry.
While this partnership may not seem like a big deal at first, it’s important to consider the long-term effects of a collaboration on this level. Further down the line, more cybersecurity companies will see the success of this collaboration and will start collaborating with other cybersecurity companies as well.
The end result? More enhancements for users on the privacy level. This is the end-goal, and this is what matters most today, where user data is akin to gold.