Abine Blur is a browser extension available for Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge, Internet Explorer, and Opera. Activating the app opens a toolbox with a number of features and capabilities, which we have reviewed for you today.
Do Not Track
The app’s pioneering technology blocks more trackers and prevents more email and data breaches than many standard browser extensions. It blocks ad aggregators, social media sites, and web analytics from tracking your activity. Via the control panel, users can see how many trackers have been discovered and blocked, and chart your blocking statistics over time. The app also allows you to turn off blocking for a specific tracker or site. It also comes with the DeleteMe feature, which removes users’ personal information from search engines.
Password Management
A password manager captures and stores your login credentials when you log in to a website and can import them from other app manager tools. In the manager, users can view their passwords and edit or delete them. When you create a new login, it automatically generates a strong password for you, with 10 characters and a mix of upper and lowercase letters along with digits and special characters.
You can customize the password length and character sets of these automatically generated passwords. With the password manager, you can enable two-factor authentication and set passwords to lock automatically. With the Blur Premium edition, passwords are locally encrypted, then backed up and securely synced on their servers.
With the free edition, you may lose your passwords when you clear your cache, and they may be lost forever, so use this service with caution. For this reason alone, we’d recommend Blur Premium.
Mask Email
The app will generate anonymous email addresses to use online. Emails are sent to your true email address, but that address is never revealed to the website. You can create nicknames for your anonymous email addresses, so you can remember where they were used, and disable or delete them if desired.
Mask Credit Card Numbers
A wallet feature is available with a premium Blur Premium subscription and hides your true credit card number from websites when you shop online. It creates a temporary virtual credit card in the precise dollar payment amount you specify, and uses it for that transaction, preventing the number from being overcharged or reused. The wallet will also remember and autofill your shipping addresses, billing addresses, and other form fields when shopping online.
Mask Phone Numbers
The mobile edition will hide your true phone number, much like other features hide your email and credit card numbers.
Abine Blur Reviews
We searched, compiled, and have summarized other reviews so that you can read what other people say about Abine Blur.
Blur is an interesting product in that it hides pretty clever features behind an otherwise average password manager. Yes, its password management capabilities are up to industry standards but unfortunately, certain questionable choices and details make the software less convenient than it could be.
Most notably, how awkward importing passwords into the vault is or the unconventional naming of certain features. Ok, it’s a bit of a mishmash of good ideas often awkwardly executed. But the core concept, of a password manager stuffed to the brim with additional privacy tools, works well. Certainly, if you’re looking for a free and basic password manager that auto-fills as you go. And because it doubles as a tracker stopping the application, it really offers a lot of benefits to users.
The ability to mask your email allows you to engage in online marketing, shopping, and any other activities without having to hand over your real email address. And if you decide to splash out on the premium account, a secure phone number that masks your real phone number (like Google Voice numbers) is fantastic for avoiding spam calls and phone scams.
It’s an extremely interesting browser extension that offers fantastic cross-device compatibility. However, the website, customer service support resources, and dashboard could use some fine-tuning. When it comes to customer service, there are two options for contacting Abine’s staff in real-time. The first option is sending them a message via the customer service support module, but in this case, the waiting time may be as long as three business days, depending on your subscription type. Not particularly practical, or even acceptable.
Instead, by using live chat, – available during regular working hours, that wait time can be reduced to zero, with an instant response. But don’t discount simply turning to the app’s detailed FAQ, where virtually anything that could come to mind for users is answered in a straightforward manner. A definite big plus. As is their blog, which gives you not just for product updates and general password management information, but also notifies you of the latest and important news, such as data breaches.
On the subject of which…Abine’s servers were breached sometime between 2017 and 2018, Abine discovering and patching the breach in December 2018. Although no passwords were compromised, the attackers made off with some user email addresses, phone numbers, addresses, and more. Also true is that this firm is based in the US and is closed-source, which may ring alarm bells for certain consumers.
But ultimately, Abine Blur works, is straightforward, efficient, and ‘does what it says on the tin’, (its site). It isn’t as sophisticated as other password managers (most notably Dashlane and Sticky Password), but it does offer a good and surprisingly wide range of security features for its price tag. Or rather price tags. Despite paying nothing, its free version with over 29 million users, allows you to enjoy most of the premium features of other standalone password managers. Upgrade to Premium and you can shop online without revealing your true email address, phone number, or credit card details, as well as managing your passwords too. It’s an impressive solution for online privacy.
Premium membership is a reasonably priced unique password manager, possessing strong security features combined with options for users to mask their email addresses, credit card numbers, and phone numbers. In this way, Blur Premium can shield users’ passwords and other important information from hackers and data breaches through standard security methods and added privacy and anonymity. Plus, you get an autofill ID, email and password, a password generator, cloud backup features, and lots more.
Looking strictly at its password-management features, Blur can’t really hold up to competition like Dashlane or LastPass, who outstrip it in terms of features and the overall user experience. With that said, Blur does offer privacy protection features that none of the other password managers can match. If that aspect sounds interesting to you, it may be worth giving Blur a look. There may be a few features missing like an offline desktop platform and options to organize your password vault more efficiently, but if you’re looking for a basic, easy to use, and free online password manager, Blur is passable, although it does have all those additional features that other password management tools skip past.
That all said, when it comes to protecting data, it’s undoubtedly a worthwhile product. The attention to account security is important, but the masking of highly sensitive personal data used in filling out registry forms is an even more ingenious idea. Combined with Blur’s multiplatform nature and the attractive pricing policy, through which even free users can enjoy the software without limits for a certain period of time, and it becomes safe to say that Abine’s password management solution is certainly a password manager at least worthy of your attention. While Abine Blur does have a few potential cons for certain users, most notably being its lack of secure password sharing for families and businesses that may need to look elsewhere if they wish to safely share accounts. Advantages such as its user-friendly interface, however, along with its unique focus on online privacy through its various masking features, may make it the perfect password management system for many individuals.
For an online security service, Abine Blur is a unique and reliable program that offers an outstanding lineup of features. Not only is it easy to use, strongly functional, but also, it secures your personal information in a way you can trust. For the average consumer, it’s a comprehensive tool that provides enough privacy at zero cost. Upgrade to an affordable Premium monthly subscription, and you get even more.
What other people complain about
- “Blur has two kinds of big problems though. Their mobile app, and the speed of updates for the platform overall.”
- “You are limited to using Google Chrome for mobile web browsing. If you try to use any other browser, no matter what website you go to, the password fill will think the website you are on is based on what mobile browser you use.”
- “It works mostly fine with other apps. However, if it does identify a field incorrectly for autofill, which can be a major pain to fix it. Also, it tends to not save the change the next time you come back. Auto filling credit cards especially doesn’t seem to work very well.”
- “Other password managers with features like family plans and safe password sharing.”
The other people love
- “The web/browser extension is almost flawless. Some minor improvements would be great, but nothing huge. The ability to mask your email, phone number & credit card too if you have premium, is outstanding.”
- “It offers amazing services for those concerned with online privacy. The software is an awesome all-in-one Password Manager, but also allows you to create throwaway email addresses in a few clicks.”
- “It’s a very clean and polished product, and the services offered are very numerous.”
Abine Blur Alternatives
Abine Blur vs Dashline
Blur may not look quite as sleek as Dashlane, but the trade-off is a lower learning curve. If you favor ‘set and forget’ type software, or don’t have the time to learn how every password manager works, Blur is better for you. The simplicity starts with their straightforward dashboard, which clearly shows all of your available features in just one place. But will it be everything that you’re looking for?
By comparison, every aspect of Dashlane is impressive it excels at basic password management, has a very intuitive interface, provides more advanced bonus security tools than most competitors, and offers responsive customer support. Dashlane might be a bit more expensive but comes with fantastic features such as its live dark web monitoring, VPN, and automatic password changer. It uses unbreakable end-to-end encryption to secure user data, has a wide range of high-security features, provides more useful extras than almost any other competitor, and offers more added value than similarly priced competitors, especially as it comes with a risk-free 30-day money-back guarantee.
Abine Blur vs StickyPassword
Blur fares better in comparison to Sticky Password. They both offer high-security features, such as 256-bit AES encryption, two-factor authentication, and a local Wi-Fi sync option. Sticky Password is also easy to use, even for users without any previous experience; securely sharing passwords, auto-filling web forms, storing secure notes, and saving bookmarks are all very simple.
Also impressive is Sticky Password’s Portable USB Password Manager feature, which allows you to load a portable version of Sticky Password onto a USB flash drive and access all of your passwords and other data on your PC. But Sticky Password’s interface is pretty outdated, and it can get a bit confusing. Also, it lacks some of the more advanced features of its competitors, Blur included in some, like dark web monitoring, secure file storage, and emergency access, and also change the identity information features to include more up-to-date options, like Zoom ID and Slack usernames.
Overall, Sticky Password has all the password management basics covered, and it also includes a couple of really useful extra features. It’s a good, cost-effective password manager for users needing something secure, simple, and easy to use.
Abine Blur vs LastPass
With an unlimited free plan and a slew of features, Blur looks like a safe bet, especially compared to LastPass, an online password manager and form-filler that makes web browsing easier and more secure. LastPass is a simple tool that manages your passwords and increases the security of all your online accounts. It stores all your passwords in your LastPass account behind a master password.
However, unlike LastPass, Blur doesn’t offer multi-device sync on the free end of things. You have to subscribe to a paid plan for that. While LastPass includes multi-device auto-sync with their free option, you don’t get the email masking feature. So, it all comes down to what you find more important, syncing all of your devices or masking your email addresses online.
How Easy is it to Use?
Extremely easy to use! When installed, it creates a button in your browser’s toolbar. Clicking that button opens up a control panel with access to all your data and preferences, where you can review, edit, and manage your data.
When you are online, the control panel will automatically pop up and offer to create emails, passwords, credit card numbers, etc., based on the interaction at the moment.
The interface is extremely straightforward, easy to read, easy to manage, and easy to use.
How Effective is it?
Many people with privacy concerns are startled by just how much information you need to provide to Abine in order for Blur the app to work effectively. However, Abine has an excellent privacy policy, an excellent reputation, and a history of being reliable and trustworthy.
Even the free version has fantastic features for protecting your privacy and anonymity online, and the ability to conceal your personal information, contact information, credit card information, email addresses, and block tracking is excellent.
The password management features, however, aren’t the best. The default 10-character secure password generator isn’t as secure as some. Since most users accept the suggested passwords and don’t have to remember them, there’s no reason to not use 20 or 30 characters in a password, the way other password generators do. Instead, users have to manually increase settings for character limits to get stronger automatic passwords.
If you forget or lose your master Blur password, you can create a new one, but it will reset all your saved passwords. In order to safely recover your master password, you should generate a “Backup Passphrase” that will help you recover all your passwords if you lose the master one.
The other problem with the password manager is the limitation for free users. For free accounts (and as an option for premium accounts), you have to store your passwords locally, rather than backing up and syncing to the Abine servers. If you are storing your passwords locally, you can lose them all, with no way to recover them, by simply clearing your browser cache. That’s a severe drawback.
How is Abine Blur’s Pricing?
At just over $3/month, pricing is reasonable for the security and anonymity of the service.
How Easy is it to Cancel?
Canceling your subscription is easy and painless, within your account settings control panel.
Would I Recommend Abine Blur?
Overall, Blur is an excellent service for protecting your online security, and Abine is a well-respected company that you can trust with your data. It’s simple and easy to use, pricing is reasonable, and many useful features are available in the free package. It’s a recommended way to protect your safety and privacy online.
Abine FAQ
Is Abine safe?
It’s now safe following the server breach sometime between 2017 and 2018, with Abine discovering and patching the breach in December 2018. Although no passwords were compromised, the attackers made off with some user email addresses, phone numbers, addresses, and more.
Is Blur safe?
Blur syncs your stored data across multiple PC, Mac, or mobile devices. It encrypts your data locally, so nothing is exposed to Abine. You can also opt for local-only storage, but even Blur’s own FAQ advises against it, as you could lose your saved passwords.
Is Blur free?
Blur provides a free and paid plan. The free service offers unlimited password storage and masked emails for a single device. The $14.99 per month Unlimited plan gives you access to multi-device sync for your accounts, as well as phone and credit card masking. Premium offers even more, albeit at a higher price.
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