Why is LastPass Pocket not recommended?

10

2

Just noticed on LastPass Pocket download and support pages, it's mentioned that

LastPass Portable is recommended over using LastPass Pocket.

However, no explanation is provided on any of those pages. I searched around, but couldn't find any appropriate explanation.

Is this because LastPass Pocket is

  1. not always in sync with the mother-ship
  2. not maintained / updated as aggressively as other alternatives
  3. it considered to be less secure by virtue of being a native app, or some other reason

Are there any risk / issues I need to be aware of before using this product?

YetAnotherUser

Posted 2013-02-14T01:05:46.887

Reputation: 752

Question was closed 2013-02-14T20:00:39.103

Please note I'm interested into knowing if it's just a corporate policy to promote specific product or if there are any specific security issues with this product that one needs to be aware of? My intent is not to solicit speculative response. – YetAnotherUser – 2013-02-14T20:30:51.533

Answers

6

From the lastpass site:

"LastPass Pocket is a stand-alone application (available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux) that can be installed on a USB memory device, allowing you to carry your LastPass data around with you. Pocket essentially provides backup capability and offline access for your Vault, although we recommend LastPass Portable over Pocket."

Why? Because you are carrying the entire password that is encrypted with you on Pocket. I.E. If you lose this, some hacker could determine your key by brute force and since this is a safe full of passwords, you are now vulnerable.

On portable, passwords are still resident on the server, thus if you lose the USB you have this program on, you do not have to worry that you are losing a copy of your total password database.

Seems to make sense to me.

mdpc

Posted 2013-02-14T01:05:46.887

Reputation: 4 176

I use Pocket to make backups I can use should LastPass ever go out of business or suffer a massive data loss catastrophe. From what I can tell from your answer, Portable would not achieve this for me (or at least not as robustly, since I might inadvertently delete the local cache used by the plugins, the plugins themselves, or lose my primary computer at the same time). – rkagerer – 2016-10-15T22:00:35.273

Lastpass allows one to export your entire database to a *.CSV file. Thus this would afford an appropriate backup approach. – mdpc – 2016-10-17T21:17:34.273

2

Not sure if I agree - for one, offline access is available on any/all browser extensions. More over LastPass is based on premise that the level of encryption render brute forcing your master password impossible.

– YetAnotherUser – 2013-02-14T02:09:09.163

Asked: 2013-02-14T01:05:46.887

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Active: 2013-02-14T20:29:20.040