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Secret Key lost. Phone bricked: how to regain access to account?

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tompave
tompave
Community Member
in Memberships

Dear Staff,

A family member is locked out of his 1Password.com account.
He's always used the app on his iPhone, but now the phone had died, and he's trying to recover access to his apps and data.

The situation:

  • Apparently he has only ever used 1Password on his phone.
  • If he has used it at any time on a computer or other device, he doesn't remember and it was a long time ago.
  • He doesn't have any other active sessions to 1Password.com. No browsers, no other apps.
  • He doesn't have his Secret Key, nor his Emergency Kit. He didn't even know what they are.

I'm trying to help him, and I've read this support page. I think that contacting support is the only option left for now.

I have his login email and master password (I know, I know). I understand that since I'm not the account holder that makes things more complicated. I thought about pretending to be the affected customer on the forum, but as I assume that there will be some identity verification step I'd rather be honest up front.

Also, I'm aware of what my relative did wrong. He's on the older side, and he doesn't speak English very well. He started using 1Password because other people in the family use it, but he clearly didn't understand the importance of some steps of the initial set up. Going forward I'm going to move him into one of the family accounts that my extended family already uses.

Thanks!

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Comments

  • GreyM1P
    GreyM1P
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    Hi there @tompave

    Sorry to hear about this situation. Here are some things your relative can check:

    Have a look for the Emergency Kit in other places. He would have had to download it when signing up for his 1Password account. If iCloud Drive was turned on, there's a chance it could have been saved there when it was downloaded. Once he's signed in to iCloud again, he can open the Files app to look for it. It will contain the Secret Key but not the account password, but it sounds like you know the account password anyway so that shouldn't be a big problem.

    Even if the Emergency Kit never made it to iCloud Drive, and stayed in the Downloads folder "On My iPhone", it might have been scooped up in an iCloud backup. If he's able to restore his iPhone from an iCloud backup during the setup assistant, it'll be worth checking the Files app to see if the local files were backed up and restored too.

    Was he signed in to iCloud Keychain on his iPhone? 1Password stores a version of the Emergency Kit in the Keychain, so if he had signed in to iCloud and had iCloud Keychain turned on, that will have saved the sign-in details for his account except for the account password. This means that when he installs 1Password again, 1Password will "find" his existing account and he'll need to enter the account password to sign back in. If he was also signed into iCloud on a Mac, I would suggest opening the Keychain Access utility and searching for b5credentials – if it's there, that's what you're looking for.

    If you've tried these avenues and you can't find the Emergency Kit anywhere, then he should email support@1password.com for further help. If you have any questions, I may be able to help here, but this might ultimately need to be an email to our support team. Let me know how you get on. :)

    — Grey

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