Coping with an elderly parent

Jeff Laing

Over the weekend, I spent about two hours on a long distance phone call with my mother trying to straighten out her Nexus 7 problem which (eventually) turned out to be a password having changed. Whilst I had a bunch of notes on her in my 1Password database, I didn't have them all, and I bit the bullet and signed us up for Families.

First, let me say "What a brilliant product".

The only issue I have, and its an oddball one, is "I need to be able to lock it down a little tighter on the iPad I'm sending her" (yes, I gave up on the Nexus and Android in general - don't let anyone tell you that Android is senior-friendly).

The problem is that as a member of the Family, she sees more than I need her to. In this case, I don't want her putting things into her Personal Vault, and I don't anticipate anyone in the family using the global Shared Vault. Instead, my wife and I have one that's shared between us, and I created another "called Mum's Vault" which is shared between my mother and I. We are probably going to do the same thing for my wife's mother as well.

I would like to ensure that the user interface on 1Password never lets her access anything other than the shared "Mum's Vault" so that I can track the changes she makes, and fix stuff when she screws it up, which she inevitably will.

If I could access her Personal Vault, that would help. Interestingly, I would call this a "Parental Control" - the Organiser of the Family could tag users as "requiring oversight". There would be no need for that to be invisible to the end user so there should be no issue of privacy - my mother has no problem with me knowing her passwords, and other stuff she will be keeping in 1Password. It would be completely opt-in.

If you could at least rename the Personal and Shared Vaults, that would help make it obvious to her that "Mum's Vault" is the one to use, not "Personal".

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1Password Version: Not Provided
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Scuba629

You can remove the shared vault now and I think in the future you will be able to do the same for the personal vault. I believe I read they are testing the removal of the personal vault right now.

That being said the idea of marking a family member as a "Child" or someone needing oversight does sound like a useful families tool.

Jeff Laing

I don't see how I can remove the share vault anywhere in the User Interface?

I know that Mum doesn't have a green tick showing in the Families control panel, but Shared still shows up on her iPad.
I've also just discovered that despite having changed her master password through the control panel, her iPad still needed the old one.

As to useful features, it seems to me that an enterprise product might consider having a "no personal vaults allowed" option for a team, to ensure that work and home are kept well seperate (on the work computer - byod would be different).

Jeff Laing

Yes, I've just confirmed it. I logged on as Mum using her new master password on the myfamily.1password.com site, but I definitely had to use the old password on her iPad.

I just tried changing her password to the same value on the website, and the iPad (next to me) almost immediately buzzed that it couldn't log on - I used the website password and it seemed to connect just fine. But when I locked the iPad and forced the password prompt, it still wanted the old master password.

When I look in the settings on the iPad, "Change Master Password" is grayed out.
How do I get these things in sync?

This seems like a pretty critical bug, if that's what it is...

dszp

I wonder if you couldn't create a vault that you invite your mother to as a Guest? Then she would only have access to that one vault and nothing else. I haven't actually used the Guest feature (I know you get two per Families account free, and that more are $1/mo just like users (per https://discussions.agilebits.com/discussion/comment/295272, and they only get access to one vault). My only question would be can guests create/edit items or just view them? If create/edit is possible, it sounds like this would be a good fit for this situation given existing features. The Teams Support on Access Control at https://support.1password.com/teams-admin-access-control/ doesn't state whether Guests have controllable permissions and doesn't address Families yet specifically.

Jeff Laing

Ok, I think I found it, and its similiar to a bug I've reported before.
If you only have a "family" selected in the user interface, "Change Master Password" is grayed out.
Once I selected "All Vaults", it all came good and I could change it, so now they match.

Jeff Laing

I don't think Guest gives me what I need. She would still have a Personal Vault which she would end up sticking stuff into by mistake.

Fortuitously, if she accidentally puts stuff into "Shared", I can fix it (because I can move it back to her "personal-shared-with-me" Vault). She won't notice and the rest of the family won't be bothered by it.

Note, the rest of the family is likely to include the other grandmother real soon now...

Jeff Laing

For anyone with the same issue, my current solution is to create a single Secure Note in her Personal and Primary vaults, whose title is "DONT PUT THINGS IN HERE" and whose content tells her how to switch vaults.

Ben

Hi @Jeff Laing

I don't think Guest gives me what I need. She would still have a Personal Vault which she would end up sticking stuff into by mistake.

Guests only have access to one vault. They do not have a personal vault, and they do not have access to the Shared vault. While not necessarily designed with this situation in mind, I think a guest account may actually be a great solution here. If you decide to try it I'd be very interested to hear about your experience.

Thanks!

Ben

Jeff Laing

I'm not sure this solves the problem completely. She still has a Primary Vault on the device itself, which I also want her to avoid using. Hmmm, I can see the nomenclature here is causing grief. When I connect on her iPad, I currently see:

All Vaults
Primary
Personal
Elaine's Vault
Shared

I have configured All Vaults to only show her Elaine's Vault contents
I have configured Elaine's Vault to be the default save

I think what you are saying is that connecting her as a Guest, instead of a family member, is that she would only see:

All Vaults
Primary
Elaine's Vault

which is better, I guess. Are you sure she would still have full write access to Elaine's Vault ? I thought that Guest would have been read-only?

I don't want to have to manage all her passwords for her, just to have access so that I can straighten stuff out if it gets confused. (Just imagine me on the phone for two hours saying "now drag your finger down from the top. no, the top right. can you see a gear icon. the one that looks like, um a wheel?" etc. I hate Android)

Scuba629

I haven't tried it but as of Release 77 you can remove the shared vault.

https://discussions.agilebits.com/discussion/61461/beta-77-release-notes#latest

And I should clarify I think they are allowing you to remove the Primary vault not the Personal Vault. I believe that is what is being tested now.

Because of that a guest account would be great for your situation. With the update you would remove the Primary vault and she would only have Elaine's Vault(and All Vaults).

If you kept her in as a family member she would have Personal, and Elaine's Vault, This is of course assuming you delete the shared vault.

Hope this helps

Jacob

@Jeff Laing That's correct, regarding guests and the vaults they get access to by default. When you add a guest, they have access to no vaults. You can add them to whichever ones you would like, though. As for their access level, they can have Allow Editing or View Only as with other members. By default when you add them to a vault, they will have Allow Editing permission. Hope that helps! :)

Jeff Laing

Given that she is already a family member, is there a mechanism to downgrade her to a Guest?
Other than delete/recreate?

Jacob

@Jeff Laing Not at the moment. Deletion and recreation is the best option. :+1:

XIII

I would like to achieve the same as in the first post in this thread: for some family members I want to have a vault that is their only vault but still shared with me (that's the way I have currently configured 1Password using Dropbox for them).

Since this involves more than 2 family members I'd rather not use guests (I have 6 family member slots from them, but only 2 guests).

Is this a scenario that you will support in the future, or should I revert to the old Dropbox approach?

Ben

Hi @XIII,

As this is already supported via Guests, I imagine that is going to be the answer going forward. It is possible we'll re-evaluate the number of guests that are included in the base plan.

I've filed a feature request asking if we could make it such that guests can consume family member spots if there are spots available. In the example I gave in the feature request: if I have two family members (mom & dad), and three guests (kids), I'd have two family member spots and zero guest spots left. I could add another two family members, or another two guests before incurring additional charges.

Ben

ref: B5-1419

XIII

Allowing any combination of Members and Guests that adds up to 9 (currently only 5+2 Members and 2 Guests) would be great (for the early adaptors; otherwise total 7).

I will then probably end up with me being the only Member and all family members being Guests...

Ben

Thanks for the feedback, @XIII. Not how we envisioned guests being used, but that is okay. It is always interesting to see how folks find uses for features that weren't necessarily intended.

Ben

XIII

That's why I would rather have the option to configure this (vaults as described before) for Members instead of Guests.

I get the feeling Families was only targeted at the Head of a Household (managing only members of that household), but I want to include parents and brothers/sisters.

Just to be sure: can Guests also install the Pro version of all your Apps on all platforms?

Ben

They can, yes.

I did also mention in the feature request that having the ability to delete (or not create) Personal vaults for family members could potentially solve this problem.

Ben

XIII

OK. Thanks. Let's wait/see how this will be done.

Ben

:+1: