Originally Published on lastpass.com on April 26, 2018 By Leah Bachmann
If you’re a frequent reader of the blog, you’ll know that we often encourage you to use our password generator either found on our website or in your LastPass browser extension. Using strong, unique passwords is essential to protect you from breaches.
But you may not have heard about the value of using unique and random usernames. We’ve launched our new username generator, so we thought it was a great time to give you the scoop on this great tool.
What is a username generator?
The tool does exactly what it says on the tin. It will generate a secure, random username for you instantly. You can select different criteria for your username so it fits your needs. For example, you can select the “Easy to Say” checkbox to get a username you can pronounce. This is useful if this username is going to need to be seen and read by others – like on an online forum or community. Or you can make it totally random for accounts where no one, including yourself, needs to read the username – like a bank account or shopping website. You can also select how long you’d like the username to be or if it should include symbols or numbers.
Once you select and enter your random username, LastPass will save it your vault exactly how it saves your usernames now. So next time you visit your bank account LastPass will fill it in, but this time it will have your random username and your random password.
Why would someone use a random username?
The short answer is it’s an added layer of security. You don’t want it to be easy for hackers to find you across multiple websites. If one of your accounts is compromised, hackers will try to use that username and password on other sites.
Not reusing passwords is one layer of protection, and having unique usernames is another. You’re doubling your security. Ultimately, you just need to ensure that you don’t have the same username and password combination anywhere across the internet, and this is another tool that helps you do that.
Also, sometimes your preferred username isn’t available. You’re telling me there’s another Leah Bachmann out there who wants my username? Yes, it’s annoying. But now it’s easy to just generate a random username with our tool and LastPass will save it in your vault.
Get started
Give the username generator a try. Next time you create a new account, simply generate a username and a password and hit save when prompted by LastPass.
You’ll be surprised how easy it is since your workflow will not change. LastPass will still save and remember your login information for you. You won’t even notice that you have a random username.