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I'm sorry you feel like someone waved a gun at you or held your accounts hostage but damn this comment is entitled. You are talking about a _free_ service that

I'm sorry you feel like someone waved a gun at you or held your accounts hostage but damn this comment is entitled. You are talking about a _free_ service that runs on physical and expensive servers. It even offers an easy way to export your entire account in a csv. They are not doing anything wrong here other than trying to stop burning cash.

Proziam 6y ago
> this comment is entitled One who set an expectation ought not be shocked when one's users have that expectation. I don't think they are evil, but I do think they handled this transition poorly and with messaging that clearly didn't win their users over to their side. Also, tracking is bad. I wouldn't do business with them on that basis.
- imagine99 6y ago
  In principle I agree. I certainly don't think they used to be evil, they set out do create a product and brand that stood for safety and security and trust. I think they've lost focus of that now, their incentives have shifted (maximum cash extraction) and they're also tone-deaf. You just can't add 7 trackers to such a product without losing credibility. Look, nowadays, some telemetry feedback (aka. trackers) is extremely valuable to iterate quickly and improve your software, also to the benefit of the end-user. What you certainly don't need is seven (7) trackers or to make them compulsory instead of opt-in or at least opt-out. I mean, the amount of "non-evil" stuff you could learn with a tracker in a password manager is certainly so limited that it doesn't justify 7 trackers. Anything above one self-hosted, non-third-party, non-adware telemetry server does seem slightly... evil in this context. ;-) And if you add 7 trackers AND try to trick me with bait & switch tactics, well then, indeed, you're gonna lose a lot of business. Hope the bit of extra cash they got from people who panicked and didn't have time to set up alternatives was worth it...
bayindirh 6y ago
There are ways to monetize a free service further and some are better than others. Trello is currently evolving into a full-fledged project management tool and they fuel growth by adding new features to business class only. While that's not leaving the best taste either, I can understand. When they tried to limit Trello Gold further, we retaliated so hard so, they relaxed their policies a bit. I don't need their new features since it's not well organized for individuals but, they neither change the price of Trello Gold, nor remove features from it. It's a good compromise.
Fnoord 6y ago
> You are talking about a _free_ service The irony of claiming this is a free service when the service uses 7 trackers. The free service is a product!
- juancampa 6y ago
  Look again. ~~These trackers are not for advertising~~ Edit: I'm actually not sure about all of them.
  - some1else 6y ago
    AppsFlyer, Google Analytics, Segment are in there.
  - imagine99 6y ago
    Are you a lawyer? Just kidding. But I ask because you are technically completely correct and have just secured an acquittal for LastPass on a pure technicality ;-)) Mixpanel and Segment are not ad trackers, they're used for profiling and habit-tracking and essentially to get into people's brains (understand their decision making, interactions etc.). It's not advertising, it's much worse. They're also so-called "first-party customer data collection tools". The raw gold nuggets that get sold on. You could call it "people-data trafficking". Then they have four (4) Google trackers in it. Again, yes, technically not for advertising. But how we can call anything with the name "Google" in it "not advertising", well come on, seriously, I know we all like to delude ourselves sometimes (I sure know I do) but that might be a bit of a stretch ;-) A single one of these trackers might be legitimate in a software such as this (privacy-centric, a highly sensitive service that's supposed you keep all your secrets or at least manage access to them), in that it tracks UI issues, errors, crashes etc. and helps developers to quickly improve the product and create a better UX. But the rest is heavy data mining equipment. They're not the ones who'll do the advertising but you WILL be advertised to with the data collected here, make no mistake.
imagine99 6y ago
Look, I get where you're coming from, but LastPass's behavior is just not clever at all. Frankly, if I had to think of a better way to antagonize my users with 100% certainty, I couldn't have done a better job myself (short of disabling free accounts overnight). So when you're building a brand you have to ask, how much is the bad press and the millions of disappointed users worth to you? You have to understand, users you're losing this way are never coming back because you have nothing to offer them anymore. And they'll tell their friends, family, colleagues, bosses and just like that you lose a huge userbase. OTOH, if you treat your free users with respect, chances are they'll recommend you left and right and a percentage of these recommendations is bound to convert to paying customers. Of course if you're greedy and want to milk your customers for all they're worth and you don't really care about the long-term success of your product or your brand, then by all means, go for it. Another thought experiment: Imagine I gave you a generous gift for your birthday, like a new gaming laptop. You'd be using it for a few months, you'd finally throw out your old desktop PC and create your whole digital life around this laptop, install all your software, configure all your shortcuts etc. Then one morning I'd just show up and say, either you're paying my $$ every month from now until you die or I'll make it so that the left mouse button/half the RAM/the right screen half don't work anymore. You'd be just the tiniest bit pissed about that, wouldn't you? Sure, I'd claim that there was a file in C:\Windows\system32\drivers\etc\giftconditions-eula.txt that said I could do that anytime, too bad you didn't read it. But because while it looked like I was being generous, my goal was to trap you and then force you into a situation where it's ostensibly easier to just give me some money every month than to switch your whole life back to another system and build everything again from scratch. Additionally, even if you agreed to pay me, I'd now hide a few rootkits and trackers on the device, cause what are you gonna do? Sure, I might say, feel free to copy all your files to a USB stick and use them elsewhere (GDPR) but come on... Yeah okay it's not the same. But can we agree that LastPass's behavior is a great example of how to make people angry at you?
- juancampa 6y ago
  > OTOH, if you treat your free users with respect How did they disrespect their users? They even offer CSV export. Perhaps you can offer an alternative way doing it, I'm genuinely interested. It's expensive to develop, maintain, improve a service that works across devices, operating systems, and browsers. But more importantly, _someone_ has to pay for CPU, RAM and bandwidth. Would you rather that someone be yourself or (eventually) advertisers. Note that the listed trackers are not really trackers but analytics tools.
some1else 6y ago
The cost of storage is marginal, 1 subscribing user subsidizes 100-1000 free users. The encryption computation is offloaded to the client as well. That's why this service is a profitable recipe for freemium. I'm sorry you're sorry about the parent commenter's experience.
- imagine99 6y ago
  No need to feel sorry for me ;-) Personally, I am used to that, I've been in IT for too long. But I can indeed imagine that some people experienced some anguish over this. I agree that storage cost is completely marginal and I am quite sure they had a sustainable ratio of paying to free users (otherwise they'd have made completely different decisions or shut the service down). In my experience, LastPass had one of the best brand reputations among password managers, and LogMeIn can do "good software" (but not sell it sensibly to anyone but enterprise audiences it seems). That's down the drain now of course, which certainly is a shame. 7 trackers and the purposeful deterioration of the free tier can only be explained by greed, I think. (Unfortunately, we'll likely never know the true decision-making process that went into this but come on, it's a game of probabilities).
  - kwanbix 6y ago
    LogMeIn did the same. They became popular because they have a great product that was free to use for personal matters. So I had it installed on all of my family and friend's computers to use it occasionally when they had trouble. Then one day they changed license and you couldn't use them anymore. I had to move to TeamViewer.
    - imagine99 6y ago
      And then TeamViewer did the same, and if you accidentally connected to a Windows Server OS, they locked your account :-( So I had to move on to... nothing actually, now I'm using the Windows-integrated "Quick Assist" feature which works fairly well (but requires a Microsoft account unfortunately).
karaterobot 6y ago
If customers had known this would happen when they put their data on LastPass, I think I would agree with you. In this case, LastPass is using a classic bait and switch tactic on their customers, which seems within their rights but is definitely not earning trust or loyalty from anybody.

Proziam 6y ago

> this comment is entitled One who set an expectation ought not be shocked when one's users have that expectation. I don't think they are evil, but I do think they handled this transition poorly and with messaging that clearly didn't win their users over to their side. Also, tracking is bad. I wouldn't do business with them on that basis.

imagine99 6y ago
In principle I agree. I certainly don't think they used to be evil, they set out do create a product and brand that stood for safety and security and trust. I think they've lost focus of that now, their incentives have shifted (maximum cash extraction) and they're also tone-deaf. You just can't add 7 trackers to such a product without losing credibility. Look, nowadays, some telemetry feedback (aka. trackers) is extremely valuable to iterate quickly and improve your software, also to the benefit of the end-user. What you certainly don't need is seven (7) trackers or to make them compulsory instead of opt-in or at least opt-out. I mean, the amount of "non-evil" stuff you could learn with a tracker in a password manager is certainly so limited that it doesn't justify 7 trackers. Anything above one self-hosted, non-third-party, non-adware telemetry server does seem slightly... evil in this context. ;-) And if you add 7 trackers AND try to trick me with bait & switch tactics, well then, indeed, you're gonna lose a lot of business. Hope the bit of extra cash they got from people who panicked and didn't have time to set up alternatives was worth it...

bayindirh 6y ago

There are ways to monetize a free service further and some are better than others. Trello is currently evolving into a full-fledged project management tool and they fuel growth by adding new features to business class only. While that's not leaving the best taste either, I can understand. When they tried to limit Trello Gold further, we retaliated so hard so, they relaxed their policies a bit. I don't need their new features since it's not well organized for individuals but, they neither change the price of Trello Gold, nor remove features from it. It's a good compromise.

Fnoord 6y ago

> You are talking about a _free_ service The irony of claiming this is a free service when the service uses 7 trackers. The free service is a product!

juancampa 6y ago
Look again. ~~These trackers are not for advertising~~ Edit: I'm actually not sure about all of them.
- some1else 6y ago
  AppsFlyer, Google Analytics, Segment are in there.
- imagine99 6y ago
  Are you a lawyer? Just kidding. But I ask because you are technically completely correct and have just secured an acquittal for LastPass on a pure technicality ;-)) Mixpanel and Segment are not ad trackers, they're used for profiling and habit-tracking and essentially to get into people's brains (understand their decision making, interactions etc.). It's not advertising, it's much worse. They're also so-called "first-party customer data collection tools". The raw gold nuggets that get sold on. You could call it "people-data trafficking". Then they have four (4) Google trackers in it. Again, yes, technically not for advertising. But how we can call anything with the name "Google" in it "not advertising", well come on, seriously, I know we all like to delude ourselves sometimes (I sure know I do) but that might be a bit of a stretch ;-) A single one of these trackers might be legitimate in a software such as this (privacy-centric, a highly sensitive service that's supposed you keep all your secrets or at least manage access to them), in that it tracks UI issues, errors, crashes etc. and helps developers to quickly improve the product and create a better UX. But the rest is heavy data mining equipment. They're not the ones who'll do the advertising but you WILL be advertised to with the data collected here, make no mistake.

imagine99 6y ago

Look, I get where you're coming from, but LastPass's behavior is just not clever at all. Frankly, if I had to think of a better way to antagonize my users with 100% certainty, I couldn't have done a better job myself (short of disabling free accounts overnight). So when you're building a brand you have to ask, how much is the bad press and the millions of disappointed users worth to you? You have to understand, users you're losing this way are never coming back because you have nothing to offer them anymore. And they'll tell their friends, family, colleagues, bosses and just like that you lose a huge userbase. OTOH, if you treat your free users with respect, chances are they'll recommend you left and right and a percentage of these recommendations is bound to convert to paying customers. Of course if you're greedy and want to milk your customers for all they're worth and you don't really care about the long-term success of your product or your brand, then by all means, go for it. Another thought experiment: Imagine I gave you a generous gift for your birthday, like a new gaming laptop. You'd be using it for a few months, you'd finally throw out your old desktop PC and create your whole digital life around this laptop, install all your software, configure all your shortcuts etc. Then one morning I'd just show up and say, either you're paying my $$ every month from now until you die or I'll make it so that the left mouse button/half the RAM/the right screen half don't work anymore. You'd be just the tiniest bit pissed about that, wouldn't you? Sure, I'd claim that there was a file in C:\Windows\system32\drivers\etc\giftconditions-eula.txt that said I could do that anytime, too bad you didn't read it. But because while it looked like I was being generous, my goal was to trap you and then force you into a situation where it's ostensibly easier to just give me some money every month than to switch your whole life back to another system and build everything again from scratch. Additionally, even if you agreed to pay me, I'd now hide a few rootkits and trackers on the device, cause what are you gonna do? Sure, I might say, feel free to copy all your files to a USB stick and use them elsewhere (GDPR) but come on... Yeah okay it's not the same. But can we agree that LastPass's behavior is a great example of how to make people angry at you?

juancampa 6y ago
> OTOH, if you treat your free users with respect How did they disrespect their users? They even offer CSV export. Perhaps you can offer an alternative way doing it, I'm genuinely interested. It's expensive to develop, maintain, improve a service that works across devices, operating systems, and browsers. But more importantly, _someone_ has to pay for CPU, RAM and bandwidth. Would you rather that someone be yourself or (eventually) advertisers. Note that the listed trackers are not really trackers but analytics tools.

some1else 6y ago

The cost of storage is marginal, 1 subscribing user subsidizes 100-1000 free users. The encryption computation is offloaded to the client as well. That's why this service is a profitable recipe for freemium. I'm sorry you're sorry about the parent commenter's experience.

imagine99 6y ago
No need to feel sorry for me ;-) Personally, I am used to that, I've been in IT for too long. But I can indeed imagine that some people experienced some anguish over this. I agree that storage cost is completely marginal and I am quite sure they had a sustainable ratio of paying to free users (otherwise they'd have made completely different decisions or shut the service down). In my experience, LastPass had one of the best brand reputations among password managers, and LogMeIn can do "good software" (but not sell it sensibly to anyone but enterprise audiences it seems). That's down the drain now of course, which certainly is a shame. 7 trackers and the purposeful deterioration of the free tier can only be explained by greed, I think. (Unfortunately, we'll likely never know the true decision-making process that went into this but come on, it's a game of probabilities).
- kwanbix 6y ago
  LogMeIn did the same. They became popular because they have a great product that was free to use for personal matters. So I had it installed on all of my family and friend's computers to use it occasionally when they had trouble. Then one day they changed license and you couldn't use them anymore. I had to move to TeamViewer.
  - imagine99 6y ago
    And then TeamViewer did the same, and if you accidentally connected to a Windows Server OS, they locked your account :-( So I had to move on to... nothing actually, now I'm using the Windows-integrated "Quick Assist" feature which works fairly well (but requires a Microsoft account unfortunately).

karaterobot 6y ago

If customers had known this would happen when they put their data on LastPass, I think I would agree with you. In this case, LastPass is using a classic bait and switch tactic on their customers, which seems within their rights but is definitely not earning trust or loyalty from anybody.