How to handle multiple users 1 PC / Family or Teams?
Switching over from LastPass for my small business (4 employees, including me) and, separately, my wife. Having looked at the feature set of Teams, Business, and Family options, the Family option would do fine given there are only 5 users in total, although I understand some of the more granular controls available in Teams and Business. I had set things up for my office configuration, all seemed as if it would do the trick.
However, at home is where I run into the problem. My wife and I will frequently use our primary desktop Windows 10 PC at home, but we both need to have separate 1Password accounts. Because the business accounts need to be high security (financial services-related business), I cannot share business-related items with her or have her use the same master password. I have read about the issue of two family accounts not being able to have separate logins on the same Windows PC without having to use either separate Windows account logins (not going to happen) or having to reenter the security key uponeach switch. I don't want that much brain damage, especially for my low-tech-comfortable wife.
So, I'm essentially trying to figure how to use 1Password so that I personally only have one account, that my personal vault is my personal vault, my work vault can be shared with three others, and I can have a separate shared vault with my wife. There is no overlap between the vault I share with my wife and the vault I'd be sharing with my team. And, importantly, I want to be able to do this so that my wife and I can share one browser on one PC without a separate Windows user account, and do so by easily logging in and out of our respective 1Password accounts.
Of course, I want to do this at the lowest potential cost, although I'm not averse to using the Teams, or possibly a combination of Business or Teams & Family (since each business account comes with a Family membership). Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
And, more generally, is there a way (even if not with two accounts in the same Family group) to have different logins in the same browser / Windows user account with easy switching between the two?
Thanks in advance.
1Password Version: Not Provided
Extension Version: Not Provided
OS Version: Windows 10
Sync Type: Not Provided
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Hi @SFC303, thanks so much for writing in - that's a great question!
1Password is designed to work with the features provided by the operating system that it runs on. Modern operating systems such as Windows provide separate user profiles to keep data separate, so 1Password takes advantage of this.
If using separate user profiles is not an option, one potential workaround is for one user to make use of the desktop app and the other to use 1Password.com to access their data. Another great option is to make use of separate browser profiles. This way, you and your wife can add your account to the 1Password extension in the browser and make use of 1Password's autofill, and switching between the two profiles will allow you to sign in (via your Master Password) and access your data separately.
For the sake of security, it's important to note that if you get to know your wife's Master Password or she gets to know yours, you will be able to gain access to the other's user account by switching browser profiles and typing in the Master Password. Since you mentioned that security of your work data is of the utmost importance, you may want the added benefit that Windows user profiles would offer, as this would require you to sign into your user profile before you could sign into your 1Password account with your Master Password. In either situation, it will be of critical importance to ensure that your Master Password is known only to yourself.
With regard to the membership configuration that's right for you, there will be two main considerations to balance - access control, and recovery options. We generally suggest having at least two Administrators on an account so that if one Administrator loses their account access, the other can offer recovery (since we do not have the keys that decrypt your data, we are unable to offer account recovery in the event of a lost Master Password or Secret Key). With this comes the potential for the second Administrator to give themselves access to vaults that you would prefer they don't see - for example, they could give themselves access to the vault you share with your wife, or if your wife is the Administrator she could give herself access to work-related vaults (the option to appoint a user with recovery-only privileges is available as part of 1Password Business). Of course we are not in a place to say whom you should or should not trust, but rather to point out the potential for these things to happen so the risks can be considered.
If you would prefer absolute control as the only Administrator on the account, my suggestion would be to use a team account for yourself, and then share vaults with your wife/colleagues set up as guests. This will allow you to invite your wife to a specific vault shared between the two of you, and maintain another vault shared with just your colleagues. Inviting the others as guests means that they can only access one vault, however they would not be billed as team members meaning you would pay for just one team account. You can learn more about sharing with guests at the link below:
Share with guests in your team
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Thank you, Dayton_ag. Very helpful. I have played around with separate browser profiles (Firefox), which seems to do the trick. Much easier than a separate OS-level account.
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