Why this site exists

Getting locked out of your own account or file is a small disaster with a surprisingly confusing set of answers online — many of them either hand-wavy or quietly pointing you somewhere you shouldn't go. LostMyPass is an attempt to be the plain, honest version.

Every guide here is built on three commitments, and they're worth stating out loud because they shape what we will and won't tell you.

Official routes come first

When you're locked out, the recovery path the vendor actually supports is almost always the fastest and the safest — it's the one least likely to cost you your data or leave you worse off. So that's what we lead with, every time, before anything more involved.

We're honest about dead ends

Strong encryption is designed to have no back door. That's not a flaw to route around; it's the feature working. When a forgotten password genuinely can't be recovered, we say so directly instead of dressing up false hope or steering you toward services that don't apply to real encryption. A clear "here's where this ends" is more useful than a hopeful maybe.

Your own accounts and files only

Everything here is written for one situation: regaining access to things that belong to you. That framing isn't a disclaimer bolted on at the end — it's the assumption behind every step we recommend, and it's why some approaches you'll find elsewhere aren't here.

Who's behind it

LostMyPass is maintained by the team behind login.com, which builds passwordless sign-in tools. We started writing these guides because the same request kept coming up — people wanting back into their own accounts — and because the honest long-term answer so often points at the same place: reducing how much you depend on passwords at all. That's the throughline from a lockout guide to the work we do.