Passkeys as part of estate planning
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I’m really interested in using and teaching family and my clients about using 1Password for estate planning (including DNR, will, POA)
Specifically I’d like to learn how I and someone else can leave a passkey or designated recovery passkey in a safe place or places for a beneficiary or executor. For example, can I give one to my husband and each of my kids and also my sister in law? Can a recovery passkey act as a legacy contact?
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Hello @TheMacMommy! 👋
Thank you for the interest and questions about our passkey unlock beta! When a user signs in to their newly created 1Password account using their passkey on a device, that device becomes trusted and can be used to approve subsequent sign-ins. In order to access a passkey unlock account on a new device, you'll need both your passkey and approval from an existing trusted device where you're already using your account.
Recovery codes are available to customers who join our passkey unlock beta. They are not available in regular accounts that are secured using an account password and Secret Key or SSO. A recovery code allows you to recover access to your account if you lose either your passkey or all of your trusted devices. To use a recovery code, you'll still need to have access to your email address to confirm your identity before being able to recover access to your passkey unlock account: Unlock 1Password with a passkey (beta) - Save a recovery code
Specifically I’d like to learn how I and someone else can leave a passkey or designated recovery passkey in a safe place or places for a beneficiary or executor. For example, can I give one to my husband and each of my kids and also my sister in law? Can a recovery passkey act as a legacy contact?
To allow your family members, or your executor, to access your 1Password account in an emergency you'll need to provide them with the following ahead of time:
- Your recovery code for 1Password.
- Your login credentials to the email account that is associated with the 1Password account in question.
That being said, passkey unlock is still in beta and our team continues to introduce new features and add more functionality. I've shared your feedback with the team internally, letting them know that you'd like to see expanded recovery options for estate planning purposes. 🙂
-Dave
ref: PB-38407685
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Thanks so much for that, @Dave_1P. I'm really fascinated by it all and I love thinking about this topic. Now I'm wondering, I've secured my email accounts with passkeys, so what would I leave for an executor or POA? Should I look into a YubiKey to be stored in a safe with the 1Password recovery code? How long will passwords stick around for services like email or will passwords always serve as a fallback for account recovery? But wait...those are hackable or crackable so I would think service providers will eventually ditch passwords and only want to allow passkeys. How does one recover a passkey with a passkey? 🤔
On a related note, what do you think will become of app-specific passwords? I've secured my Apple ID with a passkey, but several times now I've signed up for a new scheduling service (I'm tinkering and trying things out) and I needed to log in with my password instead. Evidently Apple won't let you create an app-specific password while logging in with a passkey. What do you make of that?
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Hello @TheMacMommy, thank you for your reply. On behalf of my colleague, you're very welcome.
To confirm, are you using the passkey unlock beta for your Password account or just saving a passkey and using that passkey to sign in to other websites and service providers?
I can't say how long other service providers will continue to offer passwords and passkeys. Passkeys are still in the early stages and there's a long road ahead. If you’ve saved a passkey for a website or service provider in 1Password then that passkey will always be available in 1Password on all of your devices. If you delete that passkey, or if you lose access to 1Password, then websites will usually have a recovery process that you can use. Reach out to the specific websites that you’re using for more details about their recovery process.
For questions about Apple’s app-specific passwords, I recommend reaching out to Apple. Here's a direct link to their support page -> Official Apple Support.
As Dave mentioned in his post, if you’d like to ensure that your executor or loved ones have access to your passkey unlock account in the event of an emergency, you’ll need to provide them with both the recovery code for the passkey unlock account and the login credentials for your email account since use of the recovery code requires that a verification code be sent to the email address associated with your passkey unlock 1Password account.
That being said, passkey unlock accounts are still in beta and I’ll let the team know that you’d like more estate planning options.
Should I look into a YubiKey to be stored in a safe with the 1Password recovery code?
Can you clarify what the security key is being used for? Have you saved a passkey to the security key? If you have then for which website/service?
-Evon
ref: PB-38717811
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I’m wondering if I should put a 1Password passkey on something like a Yubikey then include that with a will inside a locked safe? I haven’t tried using a hardware key yet so I’m not entirely sure how that works. Could I include both the passkey to my email account as well as the passkey to my 1Password vault and let that be the way a beneficiary accesses my 1Password vault? (I do plan to sign up for the beta) I also keep a hard copy of our 1Password Emergency Kit in our safe for each family member in our Family Plan.
I’d like to be a sort of “1Password Estate Planning Ambassador” because I work with many seniors so I teach them how to use 1Password and how to give access to their loved ones in case something happens to them. I wonder if a digital copy of a will could be saved in 1Password. (So far they only have paper copies that I know of - I teach my own parents how to use 1Password)
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Hello @TheMacMommy
Thank you for your reply! Passkey unlock accounts are still being tested through our public beta and I don’t recommend that you suggest that your clients use them if they’re not technically savvy. Throughout the public beta, the functionality of passkey unlock can change as our development team continues to iterate and improve upon the new feature and that can cause confusion.
Better support for estate planning is something that I'd personally like to see as well! My colleagues and I have passed along your feedback to our development team. As mentioned prior, you'll need to generate and store a recovery code (not the passkey) for your passkey unlock account and share that recovery code along with the login credentials for your email account with anyone who needs access to your passkey unlock account in the event of an emergency.
When it comes to setting up a plan for getting another user into your account, storing your filled out Emergency kit in a safe or other secure storage device is the correct and preferred method of ensuring that your loved ones have emergency access to items stored in a traditional 1Password account that uses an account password and Secret Key.
As for the storing of a will, if you have a PDF or other digital version of a will you can store it in 1Password as a Document item or file attachment as outlined in our guide on how to save important files in 1Password
The guide will help you store a copy of your will in 1Password. However, since I'm not able to offer any legal advice, I would recommend that you consult with your attorney to determine the best way to store your will so that it remains legally valid.
I hope this helps to answer your question and further elaborate on using a passkey to unlock 1Password. I'm here if you have any other questions!
-Eli
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