Access Passwords On PC Using Phone

danmjacks
danmjacks
Community Member
edited November 2014 in iOS

Hey Agilebits,

I love this product! But I have one suggestion that would make this product perfect not just for me, but many others as well. It solves a problem that I find makes the 1Password model cumbersome.

The Problem

When I am at friends houses or at my girlfriends house, I don’t have 1Password installed. Now I could access my passwords on their computers via the HTML file in my Dropbox account. But this requires me to remember the password for my Dropbox account. Alternatively, if I have a generated password, I could look it up on my iPhone, but then Im stuck trying to copy that 25 character long alpha-numeric-symbolic password to the login form on the computer, which sucks. Then, as if that wasn’t enough, I have enter yet another password to access my database. So how can I access that HTML file without needing to figure out how to login to my Dropbox account?

The Solution

Host a server on the iPhone which can be accessed via a URL on the desktop. How the process could work is that end user could enable the web server through settings. The app would give the user a HTTP or HTTPS (unverified) url to enter into their browser. Using the URL, the user could gain access to that HTML file no matter which computer he/she is on. Whats great is that I can access that HTML file WITHOUT LOGGING INTO DROPBOX.

Suggestion

There are open source repos to make your life easier. https://github.com/robbiehanson/CocoaHTTPServer is one repo that will allow for a small, lightweight, embeddable HTTP server on iOS and OS X applications. The repo allows for SSL/TLS encryption, which would hopefully help make things secure. And since the server is only broadcasting to the LAN, then the threat of outside attacks is minimized.

Idk, just a thought. Let me know your opinions.

Comments

  • MikeT
    MikeT
    edited November 2014

    Hi @danmjacks,

    That’s a great idea and it is actually how our Backups and Restore service used to work in 1Password for iOS in the past; we were using a tiny web server in the app to serve backups and to upload backup files to restore from.

    The problem with putting the server in the iOS app is that it is very fragile to network setups, we constantly deal with firewall issues, VPN, router settings, and so many other issues. It’s why we’ve killed Wi-Fi server and backups/restore service in the first place, it just didn’t work well for many customers.

    There might be a way around this by putting a tiny web server on your USB drive to run the 1PasswordAnywhere from, something node or python could do for you. We do have some ideas that could bypass the browser's local file restrictions but I don't know when we might have a solid solution for this.

  • danmjacks
    danmjacks
    Community Member

    Hey Mike,
    Thank you for your reply. I see now why that might cause a problem for many people. I will definitely try the solution that you mentored and perhaps load something onto a usb drive.

    Thanks again,
    Daniel

  • Megan
    Megan
    1Password Alumni

    Hi @danmjacks,

    I'm so glad to hear that @MikeT's post was helpful! If you have any other questions or concerns, we're here for you. :)

This discussion has been closed.