One More Emergency Access Question

Hi @PasswordSchmassword

There was a long and excellent discussion in this forum at this link about emergency access by family members with many requests for something similar to LastPass, Dashlane and others. Unfortunately it was closed, I guess 1PW people didn't want to keep discussing it :-).

Threads are automatically closed after 6 months of inactivity.

Anyhow, one of the things I am struggling with, with 1 PW, is that if I understand correctly there really is no such thing as "emergency access". If I want my family to be able to access my passwords in the event of my incapacitation or death, I have to have shared them with them on 1PW, correct?

That would certainly be one way, but an alternative (and the recommended solution) would be to keep a printed copy of your Emergency Kit in a safe location, which you could detail in your estate planning documents:

Get to know your Emergency Kit

I understand that 1PW wants to be able to say they have the most secure system. But IF I am correct above, practically speaking that makes it far less secure for me. That means I must share highly sensitive passwords no one needs if I am OK, with non-tech family members that are far more likely to be hacked, and more likely to do something like store their emergency kit online unencrypted.

I'd recommend storing it offline, on paper, in a secure location such as a bank deposit box or fire safe.

I am sure 1PW is tired of discussing this but this issue is really holding me back.

I wouldn't say that at all. I think there is opportunity to do better here, but at the moment the best solution is a low-tech one. If we decide to build a high-tech one, we want to be very careful with the implementation details. We absolutely do not want to put ourselves in a position where we have access to your encryption keys and are responsible for doling them out. One of the attractions to 1Password is that we never have those keys.

If I am wrong and there is another way to do it (without some weird workaround like everyone was coming up with in that thread), I'd love to hear about it.

Hopefully the suggestion above is helpful. 🤞

Thanks as always to the 1PW crew for your answers. Having a community where you answer questions is a huge plus and says a lot about you.

Thanks so much for saying so. :) It means a lot.

Ben