3 Ways to Make Your Holiday Shopping a Breeze — and Keep You Safe

Updated 11.12.19 Since our last holiday shopping season, we’ve seen a lot of changes with LastPass. As Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and gift-giving season approach quickly, we’re sharing best practices for using LastPass to make online shopping fast, easy, and most importantly, secure. Cyber security is a top priority for many consumers after so many of your favorite brands have been in the news this year due to data breaches. Here are our tips for using the  LastPass to keep your personal information secure, while also making it easy and quick to get your online shopping done this holiday season.

Adding New Items

You’ll be inputting lots of information as you shop for loved ones this holiday season. From your personal information to shipping and billing address to credit card numbers, that’s a lot of typing, and it should be as seamless as possible. Before you do any shopping, get everything into LastPass by adding these items using the new structure in your vault. Here’s how:

1. Click the LastPass icon in your browser and select “Open My Vault.”
2. Select the + icon in the bottom right and choose “Add Item.”
3. On the menu, select the type of item you want to add (Payment Card, Address, etc)
4. Enter your information and click “Save” so you can access it later when you need it.

Do this for all of the information you’ll need throughout the holiday shopping season. Don’t forget each of your shipping addresses — your home, work, your parents or in-laws — so you can quickly fill it in when you need it.

Creating New Accounts

When you’re buying for others, you’ll find yourself on sites where you don’t already have an account, and you need to create one. The last thing you want is to take too much time creating those new accounts, so use LastPass to quickly fill your personal information (via the items you added above) and generate strong passwords. Here’s how:

1. Click the icon in the empty account information field (Name, email address, etc).
2. In the drop-down menu, click the item that corresponds to your personal information, and it auto-fills for you.
3. In the password field, click the icon to show the password generator (which has a modern look and feel). You can "Fill Password" to use the auto-generated one, or choose "More Options" to change the requirements, such as length, complexity, and characters.
4. Click "Fill Password" where it will populate both password fields, and submit the entire form.
5. In the top right, a card will ask if you want to add the new site to your vault. Click "Add" and you now have the new account saved and easily accessible if you need to go back and track your order or contact support.

Filling Your Credit Card & Addresses

Perhaps one of the more tedious aspects of shopping online is typing in your address and credit card - endlessly. LastPass eliminates that process and reduces it to one click, and is the tool you’ll use most often throughout the upcoming holiday season. Here’s how to fill your information for purchases:

1. Ensure you added your payment cards and shipping/billing addresses to your vault, as noted in "Add Items" section above.
2. On the online checkout page, click the LastPass icon in the empty address field. You’ll see a drop down menu of items you added to your vault. Click the one you want and LastPass automatically fills in the form.
3. In the credit card fields, again click the LastPass icon and select the payment card you want to use to automatically fill the credit card number, expiration date, and security code.

Just like that, you’ve made the online shopping process a series of clicks rather than a frustrating, time-consuming process of finding your credit card number and filling in your addresses. This holiday season, use the new look and feel of LastPass to make online shopping quick and easy, but without compromising your personal online security.

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