Moving Beyond 1PasswordAnywhere

dteare
edited July 2016 in Lounge

In the coming days, 1PasswordAnywhere (the 1Password.html file within your Agile Keychain folder) will stop working for 1Password data stored in Dropbox. We know that this feature was important to some of our customers, so we want to lay out your options and help you figure out a way forward.

Please note that this does not affect your ability to sync your 1Password data using Dropbox.

Before we jump in, I wanted to share some history with you. Back in 2009 when we first built 1PasswordAnywhere, it wasn’t possible to use it with Dropbox. We couldn’t use Dropbox at the time because each file request needed to include a revision number and 1PasswordAnywhere had no way to know which revision numbers to use.

Roustem and I explained this problem to the Dropbox Founder Arash, and he was kind enough to add a workaround to allow us to load files directly. This was state of the art technology in 2009.

Fast forward to 2016, and it’s clear it’s time to move on. The fine folks at Dropbox have done their best to accommodate 1PasswordAnywhere for all these years, and we’re really grateful that they helped us keep it going for as long as they have.

Looking at the top reasons why 1PasswordAnywhere was needed back in 2009, we found that there are better options available today.

Accessing Your Data When Away From Your Desktop

Our customers needed a way to access their 1Password data when not at their desktops.

Since 1PasswordAnywhere was introduced all those years ago, the tech world has changed a lot. Nowadays, almost everyone has a smartphone or tablet that is always with them and can install the free 1Password app and take all their data with them. 1PasswordAnywhere simply isn’t required here anymore.

Opening a Specific Vault

Customers with multiple vaults could use 1PasswordAnywhere to access their data from their secondary vaults.

With support for multiple vaults and the All Vaults view, this is a thing of the past for Mac and iOS users. Windows users have always been able to open secondary vaults directly, so this was never an issue there. On Android we do not yet support the ability to have multiple vaults, but you can configure your device to have multiple users and get around this limitation that way.

Multiple People Using a Single Machine

A less popular use case was when two people used the same computer to access different vaults.

These days, it’s simple to create multiple user accounts on both Mac and Windows, and switch between them effortlessly. It’s much easier to use the full version of 1Password to access your data, and therefore 1PasswordAnywhere simply isn’t required here anymore.

Those were the 3 main use cases for 1PasswordAnywhere when we designed it and each one has a better alternative available today.

Hopefully in 2016 you no longer need 1PasswordAnywhere. But if you were using 1PasswordAnywhere for other purposes that we didn’t originally envision, there are alternatives available for you.

First, you can continue to use 1PasswordAnywhere with an Agile Keychain stored locally or on a USB drive. Many browsers restrict access to local files, however, so be sure to configure your browser to allow local file access. Just be aware that this could potentially pose a security risk.

If you need remote access to your 1Password data from anywhere, you can host your 1Password Agile Keychain folder on your own webserver. Be sure to enable appropriate access controls and take the necessary security precautions.

Finally, if you prefer a fully managed solution, you can checkout 1Password Families and 1Password for Teams. These services do a lot more than 1PasswordAnywhere was ever capable of and also provides full web access (including viewing and editing) to all your data. You can even view your Documents and restore previous versions of items if you delete or edit and item by accident.

I’m sorry for any confusion that you might experience during this transition. Please let us know if you have any questions and we’ll do our best to help.

Cheers!

++dave;

AgileBits Update (2016-07-04): If you are considering continued use of 1PasswordAnywhere please read the comments here first.

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