John Jonas explains how he handles passwords for both his kids and his outsourced staff (OFS). He recommends using LastPass to securely store and share credentials so collaborators can log in without seeing plaintext passwords, and highlights the ability to revoke shared access. He also discusses trust issues around giving direct passwords, advises keeping a list of shared accounts, and recounts his own experience transitioning from fear of sharing to using LastPass for easier delegation.
Chapters
How to handle passwords with your ofs. One of the things I hate is when I solve a problem, and that problem keeps coming up over and over again, like, passwords with my kids. Dad, what's my password like? Are you. Are you serious? How do you not? We've saved this password in LastPass and I've told you to get LastPass on your phone over and over again, and it's on your computer, and you know the password to LastPass. Why? What? Why do you keep coming to me with this problem? It's so frustrating to me, and especially since I know this works because I use it with my OFS now. Passwords with my kids is one thing. A lot of people think passwords with their OFS is another thing. For me, it's really not that different other than I share my LastPass account with my kids. I don't share it with my ofs. So when I first started, this was kind of a really big issue for me. I didn't want to give them passwords because I didn't know what would happen. Like, I didn't know if I gave him access to my hosting account, would he go in and destroy everything and then leave? Or maybe he doesn't destroy everything. Maybe he just goes in and makes a mistake and then ruins my whole website, and then he doesn't know what to do to fix it. And then, like, I'm. I'm totally screwed, right? So I didn't want to give him passwords because I was scared. And then I realized a little bit later, like, this is just making my life harder because I'm trying to work around this not giving him passwords, when really I kind of trust this dude and I should just give him my password. So. And I did, and it made everything way, way easier. Well, back then, there wasn't a great Solution. This is 2005, at least. I didn't know of a great solution. Soon afterwards, I found LastPass, but LastPass didn't have the features that it does now. Back then, I started using LastPass to store my own passwords, but there was no share a password with someone else. Well, now there is this share a password with someone else feature. So let me read this email. I got unjolly. So she writes and says, I'm having difficulty handing over passwords for things like email and contract software. Although I feel comfortable having my OFS on board clients and following up with clients, I don't feel comfortable yet about the OFs having my passwords, as they just started about two months ago. For Google, it turns out that as an admin, I can always lock the person out if there's ever a problem. But for some other things, like Adobe DocuSign, I don't think it's possible. So, yeah, you're right, it's not. It's not possible with Adobe DocuSign or something else. Right. However, with LastPass, it really makes this easy. So here's how it works. You log into LastPass, then you go. You install the browser extension on your browser, then you go logging into other websites and LastPass recognizes. Oh, you just logged into this website. Do you want me to store this Password? And then LastPass as any password manager should, it encrypts it locally on your computer and then it uploads it to the cloud encrypted, so nobody else can decrypt it. You encrypt it locally, it's not encrypted once it gets there, so it never transfers unencrypted. Right. So then LastPass has this. So the next time you visit that website on any computer where you have LastPass installed, you have access to that password. Well, if your OFS has LastPass also on their computer, their separate account, you can go and share that password that you stored in LastPass with your OFS. You share their email address, you share it to their email address, right? Then that OFS gets that password in their LastPass account. But they can't go into LastPass and like edit the password and look at it and see what the password is. All they can do is go to the website, have LastPass Auto, fill the password for them, which then it starts, they're not seeing it, and then they log in, so they never actually get the password. So then if you decide, oh, no, this person didn't work out, you can go into LastPass and stop sharing that password with the person. So that makes it super simple. You can revoke access anytime you want. Just kind of like with Google, where you can revoke access anytime you want. For things where LastPass won't work, you can give them the password if you trust them. And that this again goes back to trust, which really, there's a lot of trust going on here, just like there is in any employment relationship. I recommend you keep a list of websites where you gave them the passwords. That way, if things aren't working out, you can go change the passwords to everything and then you can let them go. And then they're already kicked out. Now, it's kind of a crappy way to do things. If things get to that point where you feel like, oh, I need to go change all these passwords and then let this person go so they're not vindictive and coming back and ruining things, well, things probably went a long ways past where they should have gone. We kind of did that once where we let things go a long ways past. And. And so we changed passwords first and then we fired them second, which is a really, really crappy way to wake up for a person. And generally, when you let someone go, I think they probably know this is not working out. And I've never seen a problem where a Filipino comes back and is like, well, screw you. Then when you fire them. I have seen them do it when you tried to not pay them. We're always. We always try and be very generous with people. Anyway, for some reason, my team in the Philippines has no problem using LastPass like my kids do. So it just works out perfectly. It's super easy. It's super simple to our passwords use LastPass. It really kind of solves the password problem.
