Individual User in a Family Account

TheMokaPot
TheMokaPot
Community Member

Hey All,

I had some trouble finding this information online so forgive me if I'm asking a repeat question. I'm a devout fan and user of 1Password—I got my girlfriend into using it and I just got my parents to start using it on a family plan. I currently use local vaults synced over iCloud as I only have two devices.

As a member of the family, I was able to make my account with my email. But I had a few concerns:
1. Can my parents see my personal vault or access the data in it if I copy over my local vaults to 1Password Families? I ask since I read that vault organizers can "recover" accounts w/o my master password.
2. If my parents ever delete my account, will my data get deleted? Can I use the same email for multiple accounts (i.e. overlapping family membership) say if I decide to have my own family membership w/ my girlfriend/(future) kids?

I ask question 2 mainly because it's enticing to get a 1password account through my family but I really don't want someone else to be able to mess with my personal vault in anyway (no matter how much I love or trust them).


1Password Version: Not Provided
Extension Version: Not Provided
OS Version: Not Provided
Sync Type: Not Provided

Comments

  • Those are excellent questions, @TheMokaPot. I'll try to answer them as clearly as I can.

    As a member of the family, I was able to make my account with my email. But I had a few concerns:
    1. Can my parents see my personal vault or access the data in it if I copy over my local vaults to 1Password Families? I ask since I read that vault organizers can "recover" accounts w/o my master password.

    Your parents would technically have access to the encryption keys for your personal vault, but they shouldn't have access to the data within the personal vault. The keys are requires in order to perform recovery.

    Additional vaults that you create within 1Password Families have a slightly different set of rules. Automatically all Family Organizers would have Manage access to that vault. With Manage access, they would be able to give themselves read access to the vault.

    1. If my parents ever delete my account, will my data get deleted?

    Yes. It'd be nice if when that happened your user account was jettisoned from the 1Password Families account and would be independent, but we aren't yet in a position where we could do that.

    Can I use the same email for multiple accounts (i.e. overlapping family membership) say if I decide to have my own family membership w/ my girlfriend/(future) kids?

    Absolutely.

    I hope this helps.

    Rick

  • TWSheppard
    TWSheppard
    Community Member

    I'm an individual user of 1P6 but have been considering moving to a family subscription. With the release of 1P7 I've looked at it again. My understanding from the documentation is that deleting a family member removes their private data. I've reviewed several forum threads on this matter. The following one seems to have the best discussion, although it's from 2016: https://discussions.agilebits.com/discussion/62449/deleting-family-members-or-vaults-also-removes-their-data

    At https://support.1password.com/family-sharing/#to-delete-a-family-member-s-account it states this is so. Assuming the documentation is up to date, and that the organizer can delete a family member's private vault, then I cannot use this service, even though I would be the organizer. The advice I would give any adult who is not an organizer would be to get their own subscription so that their data cannot be deleted by someone else. But that removes any cost saving a family subscription offers.

    One important point made in the referenced thread is that the organizer owns the account but the user owns the data. If the organizer chose to delete a user's account, I agree that the user should no longer be able to benefit from 1P's features if they're not paying for it. But the user should always be given the time-limited option (30 days?) to export their data to another machine-readable format, or to purchase their own account and seamlessly transfer their data to their own account.

    No matter how much I loved or trusted a family member, I would never allow my private data to be controlled by them just to save a few bucks. There may be other advantages to having a family subscription even if all members are adults, but a user not being in control of their own data is a show-stopper for me.

  • I agree, @TWSheppard. This should be done better. Our current solution is based on 1Password Teams and 1Password Business and does make sense there but it should certainly be done differently for families. When a family member is removed, their private vault should remain and they should probably be converted into an individual account.

    It is something that we hope to fix.

  • miloka
    miloka
    Community Member

    I've been a long-time user of now-ancient versions of 1Password. Recently I have been trying to get my entire extended family onto and using 1Password. Currently it's a mix of a family account with members and guests, an individual account also a guest on the family account, and stragglers that I haven't wrangled in yet. (Because of: unfamiliarity, confusion, lack of ideal fit with current features of the family service, time and focus investment of intial setup).

    Removal of a member from a family account becoming an individual account or shifting to another family account instead of destroyed is important, I'm counting on Agile Bits to deliver on that before critically needed.

    Options for younger individuals and other extended/generation-gap family relationships are inadequate so having to contort for now. Specifically, my ideal family subscription would also have:

    • a child (or other needs-tech-supervision) account that has no vault that is not accessible to the parent, and is easily migrated to more privacy when they are older. Notifications to the adult when the child creates an account with a new site/service. Maybe even with alerts about that service's privacy settings & suitability!
    • ability to create additional private vaults that are not manageable by all family organizers but only by the individual owner of that vault
    • a type of vault that isn't shared but that can be viewed in case of emergency, e.g. if incapacitated any authorized family member can gain access, and if they trigger that access the vault owner is notified.
    • ability to share more than a single vault with a guest, and/or other options to suit links between multiple family & individual accounts

    Thanks for past and future evolution of this product&service!

  • @miloka,

    Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts on this. Certainly things we’ll take into consideration as we move forward.

    Ben

This discussion has been closed.