Dashlane launches mobile email inbox scanning to assess your online security hygiene

Password management app Dashlane has officially launched a new email Inbox Security Scan feature in its mobile app, promising to give users feedback and insights into the security status of their myriad online accounts.

The company first teased the feature as part of its “kill the password” Project Mirror campaign back in January, and it was apparently rolled into the Dashlane Android and iOS app sometime after.

Today, the feature is ready for prime time, and Dashlane is shining a light on exactly what it’s been cooking up.

Inbox Security Scan requires you to link your email account to Dashlane, giving the company read-only access to your emails. This currently works with Gmail on both iOS and Android, and it will also work with Outlook, Hotmail, MSN, and Live.com on the Dashlane Android app.

Above: Grant Dashlane access to email account

Once access is granted, Inbox Security Scan peruses your email inbox to find all the online accounts you’ve set up using that specific email address. It then tells you when you signed up for your various accounts via a timeline and shows you which of those accounts have historically been prone to hacking.

Above: Inbox Security Scan (iOS): Results

Naturally, this is all about encouraging better personal security hygiene, and Dashlane will then invite you to save your accounts to its app, replete with a new hacker-proof password.

This is also reminiscent of the Inbox Scan feature Dashlane launched on the web back in 2015, but the landing page for that feature has since been pulled. At any rate, this latest feature is only available on mobile, which is indicative of how most people access their online accounts these days — reports suggest that mobile internet usage passed the desktop in 2016.

Password overload

The problem that Dashlane is looking to fix is password overload. The average internet user has more than 150 online accounts, according to a previous Dashlane study, many of which may be dormant or are infrequently accessed. Ultimately, it’s difficult to keep tabs on so many online accounts, and maintaining unique passwords for each of them is a major challenge.

Dashlane has raised around $54 million since its inception in 2009, and it competes with other password management platforms, such LastPass, which was snapped up for $110 million by LogMeIn a while back, and 1Password, which is operated by Canadian firm AgileBits. Popular VPN provider TunnelBear also launched its own password management app last year.

With major data breaches rarely out of the headlines, Dashlane is using Inbox Security Scan to encourage new users to better manage their online accounts, while existing Dashlane users can take a deep dive into their internet past to see where they can improve security for old and forgotten accounts.

“With the release of Inbox Security Scan, we’re putting the needs of people front and center, offering anyone interested in understanding their digital footprint a huge amount of personalized insight within seconds of downloading the Dashlane app,” said Dashlane CEO Emmanuel Schalit. “Inbox Security Scan was designed to make identifying and importing critical accounts as easy as possible and to help take control of and increase protection for these accounts quickly once they are in Dashlane.”