When creating a Dashlane account, you are asked to choose your email address and a Master Password. Because this step is missing from their process, someone was able to create an account using my email address. Dashlane does not ask for confirmation of your email address during creation of your account. You’ll notice that there’s a rather important (at least in my opinion) step missing here. Once you’ve created this login, you can begin creating passwords and storing them with the Dashlane service. When you create a Dashlane account, you give them your email address, and you create a master password. We went back and forth quite a bit over a few days and I determined that they have made a design decision with which I don’t really agree. He understood my concerns, he addressed them, and he was polite and professional. In parallel, I tweeted (and followed them so that they could Direct Message me). I suggested she escalate this to someone who could understand what I was trying to explain to her. I wrote back explaining yet again that I did not open the account and that I was concerned about how someone could create an account connected to my email address who was not me.

It was pretty clear that this was a canned response, or else she didn’t read very clearly.

Christine from Dashlane responded quite promptly, and explained that I could delete “my” account, but she cautioned me that I would not be able to use “my” Dashlane account if I deleted it, and that I would lose all of my data. I requested that the account be suspended and that they contact me to discuss the implications of this. I contacted them through their support email explaining the situation. This was odd, only because I did not open an account with Dashlane. It was a message from Dashlane, welcoming me to their password manager service.

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