Feature request: Select "nth" character of password

rturb

Increasingly UK banks/financial institutions are asking for 3 characters from a password, instead of the full password. This is pretty easy when you have short passwords, but it's difficult to count along a long password of random alphanumerics and symbols for (eg) the 9th, 17th and 26th characters! It also means I have to reveal the password. Could you add a feature that will tell you what the "nth" character of a password is?

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1Password Version: 5.3.2
Extension Version: 4.3.1.90
OS Version: OSX 10.10.3
Sync Type: Dropbox

danco

This has been asked for many times, but is harder than a user might think. Certainly it's the kind of thing AgileBits would already have done if it were straightforward.

If you search the forums you will find several threads on the subject, with various people's suggestions of what to do currently.

My own method is to store a copy of the password in the Notes field, but in blocks of five characters rather than the long string which a password itself would require. That is, abcde fghij klmno

That way it is fairly easy to find the 13th, 6th and 2nd characters and fill them in.

Yes, it means the password will be revealed but I would just make sure noone else could see it while it was revealed.

MrC

@rturb,

Until there is something in 1Password to help identify the character value of a given character position, this post may help.

littlebobbytables

Hi @rturb,

I apologise we haven't come up with anything more elegant yet. Hopefully when we do it will be something special. Until then I've added your post as vote for the existing (and still open) request we have.

ref: OPM-1720

stephend

Hi @littlebobbytables,
Please can you add another +1 for that feature request. Long time 1Password user on all my devices :)
https://xkcd.com/327/ also :)

Thanks,

Stephen

Stephen_C

You will be happier when 1P5.4 for Mac is released from beta testing. It has a facility to show a password in large type and when you do that you will see a sequence of numbers under the characters of the password which enable you easily to identify the characters the login requires.

Stephen

Drew_AG

Hi @stephend,

As (the other) Stephen mentioned, the new large type display option for passwords in version 5.4 should definitely help with that.

Kudos for getting the reference in @littlebobbytables' username and avatar! I'm sure he'll be happy to see that. :)

OnePassMan

Not that it's my place but i've seen so many posts about this and had to finally comment because: Internet.

If 1P can store and retrieve the password string, why in the world could it not grab a range of characters from it?

Every possible programming language and framework i can think of has this ability available in one line of code including Foundation + NSString.

https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Cocoa/Reference/Foundation/Classes/NSString_Class/#//apple_ref/occ/instm/NSString/substringWithRange:

    // The start position of the character the user wants.
    NSInteger idxOfDesiredCharacterStart = 6;

    // The length of characters the user wants to retrieve.
    NSInteger lengthOfDesiredCharacters = 1;

    NSString *passwordString = @"MyFantastiPassword123";

    /* Sanity checks to ensure the specified values are valid for the password. */

    NSRange desiredRange = NSMakeRange(idxOfDesiredCharacterStart - 1, lengthOfDesiredCharacters);

    // Result
    NSString *desiredCharacters = [passwordString substringWithRange:desiredRange];

For the specific websites that require a password to be input this way, have a flag set on the the LoginCredentials object (BOOL requiresPasswordOfSpecificCharactersOnFill) that opes up a window asking the user for the parameters.

If the problem lies in making this automated (detecting what characters the page is asking for) then that is silly.
Users are already jumping through hoops to find workarounds which consume far more time. This solves 90% of the problem.

MrC

@OnePassMan,

The OP's request here was to reveal the character positions of the password so they can be used for entry on the rare bank sites that ask for them. A recently 1Password beta update made that feature available, and it is the Large Type option in the password's pull down menu.

The AgileBits folks know how to grab then Nth character in a string. What you're asking for is a UI that supports naming or selecting a range of characters. You still need the feature in Large Type to show the user the character positions. It seems circuitous, or cumbersome, to use a range-specification text dialog to specify the range of desired characters, press OK to copy them, and then Paste them elsewhere, when you can now just as easily manually enter the two or three required.

A better possible implementation could be to click-select the revealed characters in the desired order (which auto-fills the copy buffer), but this as I'm sure you'll know requires much more code.

littlebobbytables

Hi @OnePassMan,

As MrC explains, the issue isn't grabbing a particular character, as you say and I agree - that's pretty easy. The tricky part is coming up with something that works reliably and is easy enough to use that you don't want to tear your hair out. If there was an agreed standard that all sites used in terms of annotating these fields we could automatically fill and that would be very cool. The sites that most often deploy this sort of approach though are banks and my general experience is they're not too keen on password managers or certainly weren't at one point.

When we look at the page what we see usually looks pretty simple but unfortunately 1Password has to work with the DOM. This can make it more complex than it would seem on the surface.

I personally hope we can do better here. Like yourself and others my banks use this sort of login page so I'd benefit too. Fingers crossed!