LastPass launches first major release since LogMeIn, lets you grant account access to people during emergencies, and provides a new way to share passwords
Bertel King, Jr / Android Police :
Context & Ripple Effects
This is LastPass's first major product release since its $125M acquisition by LogMeIn ($110M cash plus $15M tied to milestones), so it doubles as a signal of whether LogMeIn would keep investing in the product or let it coast. The emergency-access feature matters because password vaults had no built-in answer to 'what happens when the owner dies or is locked out' — a gap that keeps users on paper backups or shared spreadsheets.
The release also extends a pattern of standalone product buildout under LogMeIn ownership: LastPass shipped a native Mac client with offline access in January 2015, then its own TOTP two-factor app across Android, iOS, and Windows Phone in March. The arc continued after this story, with LastPass later making password management free across all devices and eventually announcing a spinout from LogMeIn.
First-order effects
- Users gain delegated emergency access to accounts and a new sharing mechanism, removing the need to hand over master credentials to trusted contacts.
Second-order effects
- Emergency access deepens vault lock-in: once a user has wired dependents and colleagues into recovery flows inside LastPass, switching password managers means re-establishing that trust web elsewhere.
Third-order effects
- If password managers keep absorbing account-recovery and delegation duties, they shift from optional vaults toward identity infrastructure — raising the stakes of any single vendor's security posture for users who now route critical account access through one provider.
The trend: Consumer password managers are expanding from encrypted storage into credential-sharing and account-recovery platforms, with corporate owners using feature releases to defend their position.