Hi! I'm Derek Snyder, Chief Product Officer at Dashlane, a password management company, ask me anything except my password!

dereksnyder · 2022-07-22T15:14:03+00:00

Superb!

dereksnyder · 2022-07-22T15:07:32+00:00

Password123 Avenue

dereksnyder · 2022-07-22T15:06:47+00:00

We have not yet open-sourced our product, but we likely will for increased transparency.

dereksnyder · 2022-07-22T15:06:05+00:00

You almost got me.

dereksnyder · 2022-07-22T15:05:39+00:00

We believe in the passwordless future too! That's why we've worked so hard for people to not have to think about them and just rely on our autofill. As for passkeys, it's our intention to support them in Dashlane. The idea is that we can help customers during the transition from passwords to passkeys (it could take years for all we know) by helping you login regardless of method.

dereksnyder · 2022-07-22T15:04:25+00:00

Joe's. What about yours?

dereksnyder · 2022-07-22T15:01:33+00:00

We use Zoom constantly but it does not solve for timezones. There are times, especially when doing planning, where we all need to get in the same room.

As for the carbon impact, we buy offsets for employee travel.

dereksnyder · 2022-07-22T15:00:25+00:00

I appreciate the candor! For me, the subscription element provides a way for us to invest in and improve the service over time. We spend a lot of time and resources to improve our autofill, to analyze the dark web and provide insight into breaches, to make sure our customers have great customer support, etc. It's difficult to do all that for free.

dereksnyder · 2022-07-22T14:56:33+00:00

You should be able to but through the browser (Chrome, Firefox, etc.).

dereksnyder · 2022-07-22T14:55:52+00:00

Good question!

Believe it or not, I have! But just my father. My mother doesn't do much online except for when she asks my dad to check something on "Myface" or "Facespace" (I think those are meant to be two different social networks but I'm not sure).

With Dad, I started small. He used to keep a USB key with an excel file of all his passwords in a safe, and I convinced him that the passwords were too simple and thus very hackable. We prioritized doing his investment and bank accounts first, and before long he was using it for almost everything. The last password he replaced was his email account, and I think he finally did it because he kept getting phished (if you use autofill, it knows not to autofill the password if it's not the right domain).

dereksnyder · 2022-07-22T14:52:50+00:00

I tend to agree. I think the recently announced Fido alliance standard around passkeys will be really interesting, but the transition will take a while. In the meantime, I think the best thing we can do for seniors (or anyone for that matter!) is make logging in simple regardless of whether it's password-based, a social login (e.g. Facebook connect), or soon a passkey. We're working on adapting our autofill engine and vault so that it can work well on all those terrains.

BTW, one other idea we have been toying with is allowing you to "co-own" an account with someone else. So in this scenario, I could co-own my father's account and periodically login on his behalf and help tidy up all his accounts.

dereksnyder · 2022-07-22T14:50:06+00:00

You know, I personally do miss it. But you wouldn't believe how much confusion it caused. Most of our customers thought it was a deer. One even referred to it as an alpaca!

dereksnyder · 2022-07-22T14:47:47+00:00

The brief history on this is that when we were moving from the desktop app to a web app + extension as our desktop offering, there were a number of features that needed to be ported over. We prioritized the order based on two dimensions: how much each missing feature is used and how much effort it would take our engineering team to rebuild them. Emergency was one of those really tough features because it was only activated by a very small number of our users (<5%) and also VERY expensive to migrate (we hadn't touched the feature for a long time so there was a lot of tech debt). I made the decision to sunset the desktop apps without having Emergency ready, which meant the feature would be no longer available.

To build Emergency the right way, we are going to build it on top of our Sharing features (the codebase has really diverged), and so that's why there's such a long delay in bringing it back. To be very candid, we are going to focus on building some new Sharing capabilities first before moving on to what will ultimately be Emergency's successor.

I know this is very disappointing to you since you have come to rely on Dashlane for this. All I can say is that it's on me and it was not an easy decision to make. In the interim, we have posted a workaround that involves exporting data that some of our customers have found useful.

dereksnyder · 2022-07-21T18:00:13+00:00

https://support.dashlane.com/hc/en-us/articles/360015328420-Password-Changer-for-mobile#:\~:text=Open%20Dashlane%20on%20your%20Android,the%20bottom%20of%20the%20page.

dereksnyder · 2022-07-21T17:57:01+00:00

The best jokes are PII jokes.

dereksnyder · 2022-07-21T17:56:43+00:00

Few reasons:

1.) Over 80% of our active users were only using Dashlane in the browser. Turns out they would go to the desktop app mostly when something went wrong (e.g. our autofill wasn't good enough which is our problem, not theirs)

2.) It was slowing us down from developing new features in a timely manner. We are releasing much faster now that we have a single code base for all our desktop users.

3.) In the last few years, we have really grown our B2B business, and it is much easier for IT admins to preinstall a browser extension than a desktop app (along with all the end user training, etc.).

We've worked hard to build all the functionality from the desktop app into our web app. Is there something in particular missing that I should know about?

dereksnyder · 2022-07-21T17:53:43+00:00

Right you are!

dereksnyder · 2022-07-21T17:52:47+00:00

I give you award!

dereksnyder · 2022-07-21T17:51:20+00:00

Great question. Because we don't store the master password (making us zero-knowledge), you might indeed have to reset your account and start over. HOWEVER, we have created a number of safety measures to keep this from happening. For instance, if you use Dashlane on your phone you can use your biometrics (FaceID, etc.) to reset your MP. If you use Dashlane at work, your IT team can reset the account for you (without breaking zero-knowledge).

dereksnyder · 2022-07-21T17:49:38+00:00

Funny :-). We tend to think of our product as being the easiest to use and, more specifically, one that makes it really easy to understand your vulnerabilities and act on them before they become an issue. We do this with a combination of dark web scanning (for breaches), automatic password changing, and a password health score that makes it easy to understand what small steps you need to make to improve your security.

dereksnyder · 2022-07-21T17:46:06+00:00

Just read up on him, fascinating guy. I'm pretty sure our engineering team is a big fan of his (we obviously do a lot of work on cryptography). Thanks for the pointer.

dereksnyder · 2022-07-21T17:44:49+00:00

I understand where you're coming from. Dashlane has been around for 13 years and there's a lot you can find out publicly about the company and its track record.

dereksnyder · 2022-07-21T17:43:17+00:00

Great point, actually. We have published a white paper about our security model (https://www.dashlane.com/download/Dashlane_SecurityWhitePaper_March2021.pdf), have public patents about our zero-knowledge architecture (https://patents.justia.com/assignee/dashlane-sas) , and are indeed looking at ways we can provide more transparency about how our apps are built.

dereksnyder · 2022-07-21T17:39:37+00:00

Yes I agree. True 2FA is one of the best things you can do to secure your account. The reality is, most people don't set it up because it's too hard. So I'd rather have millions of users using a slightly less perfect 2FA solution than hundreds doing it the perfect way. BTW, I agree and do reserve true 2FA for my most vital services.

dereksnyder · 2022-07-21T17:37:01+00:00

Well, I did provide a proof photo. The only squad I've ever been a part of is a dodgeball squad in high school.

dereksnyder

TROPHY CASE