How long are records of changes kept for?

cssbz

I have a Families account.

I see that there are various records of changes: "View Item History", "View Recently Deleted", "Archive".

I'm a bit confused about how long these records are kept for. The support article https://support.1password.com/item-history/ describes this in a few places, but they seem inconsistent (unless I've misunderstood something).

Under "Instructions for Mac":

You can recover items up to 30 days after you deleted them.

Under Get Help, near the bottom:

Archived items are accessible any time from the Archive. Previous versions and deleted items are saved for one year.

So... I read this as: archived items are kept forever; previous versions ("item history") are kept for a year; deleted items are unrecoverable after... 30 days, or is it a year... depending on platform??

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1Password Version: 7.9.4
Extension Version: Not Provided
OS Version: macOS 10.13.6

Ben

Hi @cssbz

Thanks for taking the time to write in. I'd be happy to help clear that up. There are a few similar but distinct features involved here, each with different timeframes, so I'll try to break it down.

View Item History

This is kept for up to one year for items in your vault that have not been deleted.

Archive

This is kept indefinitely. I have items in here going back to 2008.

View Recently Deleted

This would be for items you've explicitly deleted. When you delete an item, it is recoverable for up to 30 days. Beyond that, we make no guarantees of recoverability.

I have to admit that your post inspired me to dig into this, and even I was a bit confused. For context: I've been working on this product since 2008, and have been using it longer than that. So, I think there is definitely room for improvement in the clarity around these questions. I've sent feedback to our product team in that regard.

I hope that helps!

Ben

Edit: I originally said item history is kept indefinitely. This actually varies based on your account type. For personal accounts (individual/1Password Families) it is kept for a year. For business accounts it is kept indefinitely.

ref: dev/web/support.1password.com#3104

cssbz

Hi Ben. Thanks for the reply, and for the digging :)

Can I just check... when you say "When you delete an item, it is recoverable for up to 30 days" (my emphasis), does that mean a) "it might become unrecoverable after eg 15 days, depending upon situation details", or b) "it can be recovered at any point within 30 days of deletion"? I initially read this as (a), but now I'm starting to think it's the (more reasonable!) (b).

Best wishes... Ashley.

Ben

Sure thing. The more I read about this the clearer it becomes to me that we need more clarity here. 😬😃

It would be B: the item can be recovered at any point within 30 days of deletion. It would not be the case that 15 days after deletion you would lose that ability.

Ben