Why 1Password is asking me the Master password today?

ylouis

Morning dev team.

Today 1Password asked me to enter the "Master password" to log in.

Surprising ! Especially when you need to retrieve immediately a password for a particular access, and you count on your expensive 1password application to provide you the result in few seconds, but suddenly today, 1Password asks for the Master password [ the same application that you open every day using its traditional password ].

I never use the Master password, it was created a long time ago when I started with 1Password. And I never use the website 1Password, hence, I never use the secret key. Because it is not obvious to remember where you stored the Master password nor what the secret key is, then you get stuck when you expect to log in immediately to your application.

Also before you realise that the 1Password app is asking you to enter the "Master password", you try a couple of times your initial password that you type 10 times a day. Then, you realise that the app is asking for the special "Master password".. Oopps, that is it? As a result you try immediately the 1password app from your smartphone, thinking you are safe, but you face the same request asking you to enter the Master password to open 1password app in your smartphone. You can't believe this happens without any reason, and why today when you need your expensive 1Password app to give you the password you are looking for.
I can tell you your panic level climbed to its maximum level in few seconds.

Long story short, finally it took me a while but I retrieved the Master password, fortunately I sent to myself a email a long time ago to store it in my keeper drawer. Think of the security!

This is very bad! Why 1Password today asked me to enter The "Master Password"?
I'm using the same Mac as every day, I didn't ran any software upgrade, all is the same as last week, same as last month.

Please don't tell me it's yet for additional security reasons, because every security expert will tell you the more you are injected security checks, the more problems we (end-users) run into.

Thank you, yves

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1Password Version: Not Provided
Extension Version: Not Provided
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ag_ana

Hi @ylouis!

1Password asks for the Master password [ the same application that you open every day using its traditional password

Can you please clarify what you mean by "traditional password"? The password you use to unlock your 1Password app is what we call the Master Password. Are you referring to something else?

ylouis

Hey,

There is the local password to log into the 1password from the app that runs on your laptop, one password for each device that runs the 1Password app actually, and there is the Master password configured for the website https://my.1password.com.

"Traditionally", I used to use the "local" password on my laptop. These two passwords (the local one of the laptop and the web Master passwords) are not sync'd together, and sometime, for some weird reasons, the 1Password apps from the laptop (and/or from the smartphone) request to enter the Master password which is the one that I configured a while back in the web site (in my case it was different than the one I traditionally use on my laptop as I never log into the website, hence I never changed it).
So why my 1Password app running on my laptop asks me sometime (suddenly) to enter the Master password that I set for the Website? This is so confused.

And BTW, the password used to open the 1password app is not sync between the different devices. So as far as I'm concerned I have 4 independent passwords for the same app that I need to manage separately.

regards, yves

ag_ana

@ylouis:

So why my 1Password app running on my laptop asks me sometime (suddenly) to enter the Master password that I set for the Website? This is so confused.

The way 1Password unlocks is:

• If a Primary vault exists, then it unlocks using the Master Password for that vault, regardless of what, if any, memberships are signed in
• If a single 1Password membership is signed in, then it unlocks using the Master Password for that membership account
• If multiple memberships are signed in, then it unlocks using the Master Password of the first added membership

It sounds like on some of your devices, there is a Primary vault. Can you confirm that's the case?

ylouis

On my 3 devices (primary Laptop, second desktop and smarphone) I use the personal vault. But since I upgraded from 6 to 7, 1Password created a second vault in the website account. That was another confusion. I don't use this second vault, only the primary. And now I can't log into my smartphone. Wow ! this is really scary. how can this tool be so confused with the right access, multiple master passwords, multiple vaults?

ag_ana

@ylouis:

I don't use this second vault, only the primary

As I suspected, this would explain what you are seeing, thank you for confirming!

So you have some devices which you have configured differently from the others, you just need to make sure which one is the correct configuration for you. Which one is your main vault? What you wrote in your previous post is contradictory:

On my 3 devices (primary Laptop, second desktop and smarphone) I use the personal vault.

and then:

I don't use this second vault, only the primary.

So which one are you using, the Personal or the Primary vault? Typically when you have a Personal vault we recommend to remove the Primary vault specifically to avoid this type of confusion, but it would be useful if you could confirm this as well.