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Its been a bad year for password managers. First, Microsoft announced earlier this summer that its popular Microsoft Authenticator app would be discontinuing its password manager feature and would revert to being an app that focused solely on multifactor authentication codes. Now, Dropbox has announced that it is killing its password manager, Dropbox Passwords, entirely. And its death is happening in three phases, the first of which begins this coming Thursday. By the end, all your passwords will be permanently deleted. If you currently use Dropbox Passwords, heres what you need to do before the app goes goodbye for good. Choose a Dropbox Passwords alternative Most of us have dozens, if not hundreds, of internet logins to various websites, from banks to social media sites. It is a poor idea to use the same password for each because, if your login details for one of your sites are leaked, hackers will try those same login details at other sites, allowing them to access your information across the web. Of course, remembering dozens of passwords in our heads just isnt mentally feasible for most people. Thats where password managers come in. These apps suggest and remember unique saved passwords for every website we visit, and autofill them for us when we want to log in. But one of the more popular password managers, Dropbox Passwords, is being shut down soon. The company says that it is doing this to focus on enhancing other features in our core productits cloud storage platform. So, if youre a Dropbox Passwords user, youll need to choose an alternative password manager, just as Microsoft Authenticator users had to do in July. Thankfully, there are several to choose from. Some of the top password managers include: Apple Passwords Bitwarden Password Manager Dashlane Password Manager Google Password Manager LastPass Password Manager NordPass Password Manager Proton Pass Password Manager 1Password Password Manager Each has its strengths, but they all do the essential thing that any good password manager does: store your myriad passwords and autofill them when you log into a website. If youre a Dropbox Passwords user, the important thing to do now is choose an alternative password manager and install it on your devices. Export your Dropbox Passwords passwords Once youve chosen a Dropbox Passwords alternative and have it installed on your devices, youre going to need to transfer your passwords that are currently saved in your Dropbox Passwords app to your new password manager app. This is a two-step process. The first step is to export your passwords from Dropbox Passwords as a CSV file. To do that, do the following in the Dropbox Passwords app: Open the Dropbox Passwords app on your smartphone. Tap the Settings button (it looks like a cog wheel). Tap Export. Tap Export again to confirm your password export. If you prefer to use the Dropbox Passwords browser extension on your computer to export, you can do that as well. Dropbox has instructions for how to do that here. The second step is to import the exported passwords CSV file into your new password manager of choice. The process will vary slightly depending on which password manager you choose to use. Your new password manager will offer online instructions for how to import passwords into it. For example, 1Password, which Dropbox recommends that Dropbox Passwords users switch to, has its password import instructions here. Do everything by October 28or say goodbye to your passwords forever If you are a Dropbox Passwords user, it’s crucial to export your passwords from the service as soon as possible. Dropbox is beginning the discontinuation of Dropbox Passwords this week, on Thursday, August 28. That day marks the first part of a three-phase shutdown of Dropbox Passwords that concludes in October, with all passwords in Dropbox Passwords being deleted for good. Heres how the phases of the shutdown work: August 28: Passwords in Dropbox Passwords will become view-only. This means you wont be able to use the app or extension to autofill your passwords on websites. You also wont be able to add new passwords after this date. September 11: The Dropbox Passwords app will stop working on all smartphones. This means that from this date on, youll no longer be able to use the mobile app to view your saved passwords. Instead, youll need to resort to the Dropbox Passwords extension in your web browser to see any saved passwords. October 28: Dropbox Passwords will be shut down for good. All passwords contained in the service will be securely deleted and become unrecoverable. If you have not exported your passwords by this date, youll lose access to them forever. With Microsoft Authenticator ditching password manager support and now Dropbox Passwords shutting down its service entirely, you may be wondering how much longer the replacement youve chosen will stick around. Unfortunately, thats impossible to predict. But password manager support added next to nothing to Microsofts or Dropboxs bottom linesunlike many of the alternative password managers mentioned above. Most of those companies rely heavily on their password manager offerings for a significant portion of their revenue, suggesting that it’s reasonable to assume that their password managers arent going to go anywhere soon.
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E-Commerce
Over 80% of Middlebury College students use generative AI for coursework, according to a recent survey I conducted with my colleague and fellow economist Zara Contractor. This is one of the fastest technology adoption rates on record, far outpacing the 40% adoption rate among U.S. adults, and it happened in less than two years after ChatGPTs public launch. Although we surveyed only one college, our results align with similar studies, providing an emerging picture of the technologys use in higher education. Between December 2024 and February 2025, we surveyed over 20% of Middlebury Colleges student body, or 634 students, to better understand how students are using artificial intelligence, and published our results in a working paper that has not yet gone through peer review. What we found challenges the panic-driven narrative around AI in higher education and instead suggests that institutional policy should focus on how AI is used, not whether it should be banned. Not just a homework machine Contrary to alarming headlines suggesting that ChatGPT Has Unraveled the Entire Academic Project and AI Cheating Is Getting Worse, we discovered that students primarily use AI to enhance their learning rather than to avoid work. When we asked students about 10 different academic uses of AIfrom explaining concepts and summarizing readings to proofreading, creating programming code, and, yes, even writing essaysexplaining concepts topped the list. Students frequently described AI as an on-demand tutor, a resource that was particularly valuable when office hours werent available or when they needed immediate help late at night. We grouped AI uses into two types: augmentation to describe uses that enhance learning, and automation for uses that produce work with minimal effort. We found that 61% of the students who use AI employ these tools for augmentation purposes, while 42% use them for automation tasks like writing essays or generating code. Even when students used AI to automate tasks, they showed judgment. In open-ended responses, students told us that when they did automate work, it was often during crunch periods like exam week, or for low-stakes tasks like formatting bibliographies and drafting routine emails, not as their default approach to completing meaningful coursework. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";r.style.height=d}}})}(); Of course, Middlebury is a small liberal arts college in Vermont with a relatively large portion of wealthy students. What about everywhere else? To find out, we analyzed data from other researchers covering over 130 universities across more than 50 countries. The results mirror our Middlebury findings: Globally, students who use AI tend to be more likely to use it to augment their coursework, rather than automate it. But should we trust what students tell us about how they use AI? An obvious concern with survey data is that students might underreport uses they see as inappropriate, like essay writing, while overreporting legitimate uses like getting explanations. To verify our findings, we compared them with data from AI company Anthropic, which analyzed actual usage patterns from university email addresses of their chatbot, Claude AI. Anthropics data shows that technical explanations represent a major use, matching our finding that students most often use AI to explain concepts. Similarly, Anthropic found that designing practice questions, editing essays, and summarizing materials account for a substantial share of student usage, which aligns with our results. In other words, our self-reported survey data matches actual AI conversation logs. Why it matters As writer and academic Hua Hsu recently noted, There are no reliable figures for how many American students use AI, just stories about how everyone is doing it. These stories tend to emphasize extreme examples, like a Columbia student who used AI to cheat on nearly every assignment. But these anecdotes can conflate widespread adoption with universal cheating. Our data confirms that AI use is indeed widespread, but students primarily use it to enhance learning, not replace it. This distinction matters: By painting all AI use as cheating, alarmist coverage may normalize academic dishonesty, making responsible students feel naive for following rules when they believe everyone else is doing it. Moreover, this distorted picture provides biased information to university administrators, who need accurate data about actual student AI usage patterns to craft effective, evidence-based policies. Whats next Our findings suggest that extreme policies like blanket bans or unrestricted use carry risks. Prohibitions may disproportionately harm students who benefit most from AIs tutoring functions while creating unfair advantages for rule breakers. But unrestricted use could enable harmful automation practices that may undermine learning. Instead of one-size-fits-all policies, our findings lead me to believe that institutions should focus on helping students distinguish beneficial AI uses from potentially harmful ones. Unfortunately, research on AIs actual learning impacts remains in its infancyno studies Im aware of have systematically tested how different types of AI use affect student learning outcomes, or whether AI impacts might be positive for some students but negative for others. Until that evidence is available, everyone interested in how this technology is changing education must use their best judgment to determine how AI can foster learning. Germán Reyes is an assistant professor of economics at Middlebury. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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E-Commerce
Being yourself is not always an easy taskespecially at work. But new research finds the ability to do so comes easier to some than to others, for a surprising reason. The ability to be authentic on the job also has a great deal to do with how well-liked you are. In a series of studies involving thousands of participants, social psychologists at Columbia Business School found that social status (defined as how well liked someone is) is deeply important when it comes to being yourself. Our findings suggest that social status may be as important as self-esteem in increasing authenticity, which is surprising, said Erica R. Bailey, a Ph.D. student who worked on the studies, said. Dr. James T. Carter, another one of the researchers and an assistant professor of organizational behavior at Cornell University, told Fast Company that the study used Bailey’s previous work, which developed ways to quantify authenticity. The studies involved conversations between strangers which took place over Zoom. The researchers then manipulated social status in follow up experiments. Researchers created scenarios, such as one where participants were told if they were selected or not for Employee of the Month, which was based on being “well-respected and admired by others.” They were asked to write about how the experience made them feel. Carter said the experiments showed that social status increased “felt and expressed authenticity.” The experiments seemed to indicate that popularity matters deeply (even long after high school). So much so, Carter says, that it’s an even more important factor than rank or position when it comes to being able to show up as yourself at work. “This is interesting from a research standpoint because prior work would argue that formal rank (or power) is critically important for authenticity, but we find the story is a bit more complicated than that,” Carter said. Carter added, Although both are relevant for authenticity, it is social status that really lets people be their authentic selves.” The ability to feel comfortable being authentic at work matters. Previous research has found that authenticity is a huge driver of happiness. A 2020 meta analysis found that authenticity is key to employee engagement and overall well-being. The latest research suggests that high school guidance counselors were wrong. Popularity does matter even after high school. In fact, it may be one of the most powerful tools one has at the office. And, perhaps, in life.
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E-Commerce
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