1Password Access after Death, Legacy Contacts

dragon1

After reading all the posts I'm asking myself what all the answers and the 'recovery code for familiy members' has to do with the topic???

Isn't he asking for something easy Bitwarden is offering for a long time...

A family member dies > I will request to access his data (if he allowed it) > I do get the chance to by waiting an amount of time > if he does not refuse the request (death, serious illness or something else) I do get access.

This is something different than a recovery code you're talking about.

ag_tommy

@dragon1

1Password does not have such an option at this time. Who knows in time we may. It is something I would like to see. Recovery codes are the best suggestion at this time. That's in addition to the account recovery option from the family organizer.

Djeross

This is one of the most critical features to add. I don't want to store my password anywhere, or entrust anyone.
The bitwarden way of doing things is, for now, the best way I've seen.
Hope this will get implemented soon.
Regards.

GSK

Yes... Completely agree with Djeross. As morbid as it may sound, I have moved everything over to Bitwarden mostly for this reason.

Djeross

I may add, this has been requested for many many many many many... years now.
It's really disappointing and hard to believe that nothing has been done to definitely solve this matter.
I'm even considering to pay for a premium bitwarden account, just to store credentials for my 1P account and take advantage of their "Trusted emergency contacts".
Or maybe I should just pay this premium account to... use it instead of 1P completely ?
Let's see what happens in the next months.

GSK

That's exactly what I did Djeross. Eventually, I just moved to BW

manofwords

Having skimmed through the white paper I don’t understand what is the problem with implementing the following scheme:

Assigning an inactivity period to a vault and a next of kin assignee who is part of the team/family.

Example of work flow:

1) Alice creates a family and shares with Bob their every day activities in a shared Vault
2) Either Alice or Bob invite their executor and lawyer Lawrence to their family. Perhaps even as a guest.
3) Lawrence signs up and creates his own profile along with secret key and account password
4) Lawrence is initially not given access to any vaults.
5) Alice assigns Lawrence as the next of kin on the “Shared” vault she and Bon share.
6) Alice chooses an inactivity period on that vault of 180 days. Thinking even a prolonged hospital visit of her’s where Bob is still alive and functioning and caring for her needs shouldn’t have him out of his 1Password daily activities for more than 180 days.

… after 180 days of inactivity
7) 1Password service does the same thing it would normally do to share the vault with Lawrence. The vault key is encrypted with Lawrence’s public key and he is granted access to the items in it.

Why is such a scheme so hard to implement? There is definitely no lack of interest and need for this feature.

EDIT: mildly infuriating is that this scheme is available today with a business account (for the event logs feature) and a kiddy script using 1Password CLI running on any cloud server or a few of them as the action itself is idempotent.

dragon1

I'm getting more and more pressure from the family concerning this point.

Overall they all like the concept of PW managers and their features. But exactly this is a point where I'm getting more and more under pressure and do not have answers for it as 1PW doesn't have any option here.

Other providers (Bitwarden, Apple and others) have solutions. But 1PW does not.

Hope to see some update coming up in near future as it really is a big point!

Pleonasm

@dragon1, to the best of my knowledge, an Apple Legacy Contact cannot retrieve passwords stored in the Keychain of the deceased user (see here), and thus this mechanism is not a viable tool for estate planning. Perhaps the forthcoming Apple Passwords app in iOS 18 may include such a feature?

manofwords

I agree this is a sticking point and it’s getting quite annoying that the most trusted and realiable and functional password manager in the industry doesn’t have anything of that nature.

Even an n-of-m scheme with the emergency kit would already be an improvement. Or a social recovery of sorts. But really a timed delay access granting feature would be the best. With an email alert to family organizers 24 hours before granting access to really verify the inactivity is a result of incapacitation.

dragon1

@Pleonasm Thanks for the details. Didn‘t know about Apple not including the Keychain. But maybe something will come up with Passwords.app

Overall it really is time, that 1Password will do some updates concerning this topic. We need something like Bitwarden is offering here.

ag_tommy

I can't make any promises but I can say that we recently saw some interesting movement on a long requested feature. It (the other feature request) is not ready just yet but should be in the next month or so. I hope we'll see movement on the legacy access feature as well. Thanks for being such engaging members of the community.

Djeross

I have to add, I see many people suggesting a long delay of inactivity for the access to be granted.
I personally don't think it is a good solution, as many credentials are needed quite immediately in case of death, or at least in the following month or so.
We need to be able to fully customize this delay, and setting it as short as we want.
As long as we receive alerts that an access has been requested, using any means possible (emails, push notifications on all apps, etc...), it would be ok to have a short delay.

ag_tommy

Thanks @Djeross

I've share that feedback verbatim with the team.

ref: PB-40945150

wclark

@thedean -- Legacy access: As an addendum for dummies like me to your very useful post of May 17, here are 1Password's notes on the basics of "the account recovery process" that you refer to there: https://support.1password.com/recovery/ . Thanks for that and your other entries.

thedean

@wclark: Thank you for your kind words and for the link.

Dave_1P

Thanks for sharing with the community wclark. 🙂

-Dave

penmoid

I’ve been using 1Password since 2007. This didn’t matter to me back then, but now I have a family. Everything they would need in the event of my death is stored in my vault. I had previously thought that making my wife a family organizer would allow her to recover my account, but now I see from this thread that this would require access to my email. I shouldn’t have assumed but please understand that this is an important feature. None of us are going to live forever and all of the methods to handle this with 1Password compromise security.

ag_tommy

Thank you @penmoid. I've shared your thoughts on a legacy type access system with the team.

ref: PB-41092719

thwn

Thanks @penmoid, I'm in exactly the same situation. I was also under the misconception, until reading this thread, that my wife as Family Organizer would have access to all my passwords in the event of my death after a grace period (and without my veto). False security is almost worse than no security. This missing feature is essential for me and my family and a reason to look for alternatives if 1P doesn't remedy this soon. At least I would expect a roadmap for this after all these years.

ag_tommy

Thank you for sharing your situation and expectations @thwn I've passed them along to the appropriate team for consideration in future product offerings.

ref: PB-41323907

dragon1

@ag_tommy concerning your comment nearly 2 months ago... Is there any update/progress in bringing this feature? Any update from your side? And don't say again, that you passed it to the team ;-)

ag_tommy

No, I'm sorry there are no updates. Sorry. The team is aware.

MerryBit

@dragon1 This feature has been requested for years--literally.

Take this 6-year-old Reddit thread requesting the feature, for example: https://www.reddit.com/r/1Password/comments/afvms2/emergency_access_request/

And that person is not the only who has requested such a feature either:

https://www.reddit.com/r/1Password/search/?q=emergency+access

This forum is ripe with requests for the same feature also, but so far the feature has not come to fruition.

OlavN

Hi, looks like a printed paper is the best solution 1password has for emergency access in case of family member's health makes stops them from accessing their personal vaults:
https://1password.community/discussion/136165/how-to-gain-access-to-parents-private-vault-when-they-pass

I had a Lastpass family account, but switched to 1password families as I found it safer and tidier.
But in 1password I can't find a similar solution to what Lastpass had:
Assign emergency access to a member while configuring number of days for denial. Then if the assigned member, using the password management web pages, requests access to my account, I get an email with a link for denying access within the mentioned number of days.

I would agree that some of the web management features in Lastpass were a security risk, maybe this one as well. But it can be done right.

And I simply don't find 1password's (lacking really) solution good enough for this core need of a family password management solution.

While you generally won't distrust family members, it's not ok for any part to have too much access. In case of a breach, what will other's think?

I would find it ok to manually share a print of my Secret Key to a family member.
But I can't see any good option to automated sharing of my 1password username and password after a denial period.

Thanks for listening.

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dragon1

Ok - thanks. So it doesn't look like it will come in near future. Thanks.

ag_tommy

@OlavN

There is no functionality for a legacy access system at this time. It has been proposed to the team. I've merged your conversation into an existing topic.

Recovery codes may be an option for you if it's something that you wish to look into. Generate and use recovery codes

• Recovery codes require access to the users email account to complete the recovery

doctordogfish

As I age and see the disarray some family members have left for others, I want more and more not to leave a mess for my survivors. This is really, really important. If 1PW is not yet ready to implement a specific purpose-built program for this, I would really appreciate a comprehensive discussion on the website (not abbreviated in the Community) as to all the potential work-arounds we could use. It should be written for laypeople, and not laden with shoptalk.

ag_tommy

@doctordogfish

Any ideas or discussion would likely remain here as part of the community. This is the very reason for this community: to promote discussions and offer feedback while having a place to interact with others like yourself. It's here to foster new ideas and bring suggestions to the table. I can't think of a better pace than the community.

If/when something official comes to light, I'm sure you'll see it documented on 1Password.com, ready for everyone's consumption.

Thank you for the feedback. I will share it with the team for future consideration.

GuitarChord

In LastPass there is a feature called Emergency Access. You designate someone to be your emergency access contact with a time period. If something happens to you, your emergency access contact can login to your Vault after that time period has expired.

Does something like this exist in 1Password? All I can find is the ability to share passwords. I don't want to share my passwords unless I'm incapacitated, and then my emergency contact would take over.

Hopefully this all makes sense. If the feature doesn't exist in 1Password, how do I go about requesting it in a future upgrade.

Not sure this is the right category but the access would be for a family member.

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1Password Version: 8.10.48.25
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OS Version: Win 11
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