On WLAN Sync in 1Password 7

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  • Searchlight
    Searchlight
    Community Member

    Because of this thread I‘m staying at V4 - hoped to spend some money to an upgraded version since V4 is aged at this times but it seems that we are encouraged to find another tool. It is very frustrating as I like 1P very much but need any kind of a sync without using a cloud service.

  • Lars
    Lars
    1Password Alumni

    Welcome to the forum, @BKKGuy! Thanks for weighing in. :)

    I don't think I agree with you that "physical security" should be the "first line of defense," but I'm not certain what you mean by either of the terms in quotes. Since you seem to have your mind made up, however, it's likely not a fruitful discussion anyway. I did want to mention for anyone else still reading this deeply into this thread that we do indeed discuss the security policies and mechanisms in great detail in our 1password.com security white paper.

    It's also not the case that money was at the root of our decision not to include WLAN sync in 1Password 7 for Windows initially. You're correct that WLAN sync does indeed require support across multiple platforms, and that support for it is often much more involved than for other issues we typically receive, due to the myriad factors that come into play: users' network environment, router configuration, device and hardware firewall setup, and multiple other factors -- most of which are outside of our control. But even the increased physical cost to us there isn't the real issue: it's the opportunity cost. It's what we can't do if we're spending our resources and time on WLAN sync that's used by a tiny minority of our users.

    We want to provide the best security to the greatest number of people we can -- and we've done that by creating 1password.com. If users want the best and most reliable security for their most sensitive data that we can provide, 1password.com is it, not WLAN sync. And yes, we could continue to support WLAN sync...and WebDAV...and OneDrive...and Google Drive...and USB sync...and...you get the idea here: every choice we make of what to spend our limited time and resources developing, designing for and supporting means other things we can't do with those resources. So if what you're looking for in a password manager is a solution that supports the greatest possible number of sync options so you can switch back and forth between them, we'll probably never be your most-likely choice. That's why there are multiple password managers to choose from out there -- some of them even free. As long as people use something besides sticky notes or re-using the same password across every service where you have an account, we'll be happy. Stay safe out there. :)

  • Lars
    Lars
    1Password Alumni

    @lutz - thanks for sharing your perspective. We can't recommend sticking with legacy versions of 1Password, but of course we can't (and wouldn't want to try to) stop you from doing so.

  • Lars
    Lars
    1Password Alumni

    @Searchlight - I wouldn't say we're encouraging people to find another tool. We're encouraging them to share their perspectives and to sign up for the WLAN sync newsletter to register their interest in this feature. If we get enough interest, we'll add it back. Because Android is able to sync via local file, the ONLY setup that actually requires WLAN specifically is Windows < --- > iOS. Obviously, there are certainly plenty of people who have at least one PC and one iOS device. But what we're trying to gauge with the WLAN Sync newsletter sign-up is just how many of our users have both this setup AND a personal preference for local-only sync instead of Dropbox or a 1password.com account. With a user-base in the millions, obviously this number isn't going to be zero, but just how many there are is what we're attempting to determine.

  • exitstrategy
    exitstrategy
    Community Member

    just add it back in, so i can finally quit using 1PW 4.xx for windows and buy the new version....
    ;)

  • Lars
    Lars
    1Password Alumni

    @exitstrategy - if you're one of the folks who'd like us to do that, please sign up for the WLAN sync newsletter that's linked in the first post in this thread. :)

  • exitstrategy
    exitstrategy
    Community Member

    i did this already. so can we have WLAN Sync back now ;)
    Seriously, just add it back. Many people want and need this. This actually distinguishes your product from the rest of the pack IMO.
    Switching to Dashlane or whatever wont improve my situation, but i need to vote wioth my wallet on this issue. i wont buy the new 1PW 7.x until u add it or some competitor gives me that feature.

    it is really a pity you dropped that feature. about the real impact on security i guess you can argue long discussions, if local vaults are more secure then ur cloud solution.
    Yet it seems to give a lot of customers simply PIACE OF MIND for the most trusted and important data, plus it sets yopu apart from your competition.
    on the other hand it conflicts with your cloud business model..
    tough choice for all sides here.

    but: think about what your customers want. ;)

  • Lars
    Lars
    1Password Alumni

    @exitstrategy

    i did this already. so can we have WLAN Sync back now ;)

    Sure, if enough other people do the same thing ;)

    think about what your customers want. ;)

    We do -- all of them. :)

  • exitstrategy
    exitstrategy
    Community Member

    can you define enough? Is there a goal or a target in terms of numbers?
    Maybe we can start a petition?

  • Finke03
    Finke03
    Community Member

    I think this discussion is waste of time. I already accepted that 1PW guys don‘t want to implement this. I‘m following this forum since a long time and it‘s always the same. You need to discuss and discuss and discuss to get an important feature. It was the same with „bringing back licence model“ and „add 2 Factor“. A long period of time 1PW guys said that 2 factors makes no sense and it is not more secure as without, because they have secret key. Finally they added 2 factor as additional feature. I‘m not sure what‘s behind this method. I would love it, if it will be announced,that WiFi think is history instead spend waste of time into this discussion and get an answer like “you can subscribe to our intransparant newsletter”.

  • kermit4karate
    kermit4karate
    Community Member

    @exitstrategy "can you define enough? Is there a goal or a target in terms of numbers?
    Maybe we can start a petition?"

    The company has said that they're using this forum and voluntary newsletter signups to assess the demand, and based on those platforms the demand is extremely minimal, like on the order of .2% of their user base, which is patently absurd IMO, but if all of us chip in $1,000 each to buy a 30-second spot during the Superbowl, hire Danica Patrick as our spokesperson, and have her explain what WLAN sync is/was, along with how it's no longer available in 1Password7 for Win...and direct everyone seeing the ad to this forum...maybe, just maybe...? :) Or, the company could send out an email.

    I've repeatedly suggested that they send out an email to those of their users who've opted-in to communications, but they had many reasons why they couldn't do that.

    Either way, I don't think anyone reading this forum thread sincerely believes that this forum or the newsletter will accurately convey the true level of interest in WLAN sync. I think the company is passively/maybe unintentionally relying on the marketplace being generally unaware of what WLAN sync is, versus actively making them more aware of it and then assessing the demand.

  • Lars
    Lars
    1Password Alumni

    @exitstrategy

    can you define enough?

    No. Determining how to allocate limited development and design resources for the company is a little above my pay grade here. :)

    Is there a goal or a target in terms of numbers?

    I'm sure different people here have different ideas of what kind of general threshold might need to be crossed, but if you've been reading this thread, you'll have already seen replies from jpgoldberg and others indicating that we've been surprised at how much lower the response has been than even we expected.

    Maybe we can start a petition?

    Not sure how we'd validate signatures, so I'd suggest maybe you direct people to sign up for the WLAN Sync newsletter. :)

  • exitstrategy
    exitstrategy
    Community Member

    @kermit4karate: i know they don't want to implement it anymore.
    Since i use 1PW on my iphone every day and i like the look and feel of the new 1PW for windows i just still feel pity that they are so stubborn and dont reimplement a feature they dropped.

    when i installed the first 1PW 7 beta a few months ago, i thought first i made a mistake cause i could not find the WLAN sync option anymore, until i found out here they dropped this on purpose.

    i hate alle cloud services in particular when it comes to sensitive data like all my passwords. WLAN sync was for me the reason to go for 1PW and buy it...

  • Lars
    Lars
    1Password Alumni

    @Finke03 - I'm a little mystified why anyone would continue to spend their time on something they've concluded is a waste of time, but I wouldn't say we don't want to implement WLAN sync. What we definitely DO want to do, as we always have, is make sure we're spending our time as wisely as possible so we can make 1Password the best password manager it can be. Implementing WLAN sync in 1Password 7 for Mac means our Windows devs either forgo entirely or have to delay significantly other pressing projects. If there's a large groundswell of support for it, we'll likely pursue it. But as I mentioned just earlier, iOS < -- > Windows is the ONLY combination of devices that cannot currently sync in an all-local manner, and there are numerous other sync options for that configuration (Dropbox, 1password.com membership). So we've adopted this approach. :)

  • kermit4karate
    kermit4karate
    Community Member

    @Lars "iOS < -- > Windows is the ONLY combination of devices that cannot currently sync in an all-local manner..."

    :|

  • Lars
    Lars
    1Password Alumni

    @kermit4karate

    I've repeatedly suggested that they send out an email to those of their users who've opted-in to communications, but they had many reasons why they couldn't do that.

    Not "couldn't," but why it wouldn't be a good idea - or even particularly effective. Not much has changed in that regard since those conversations were had earlier in this thread. :)

    I think the company is passively/maybe unintentionally relying on the marketplace being generally unaware of what WLAN sync is, versus actively making them more aware of it and then assessing the demand.

    Our job as a company is to build the best password manager we can, and to provide "the marketplace" information about how to use it, and about best security practices (and that's what we DO. :) ), not to be an encyclopedic clearinghouse of all security-related matters.

  • ManuelS
    ManuelS
    Community Member

    I am a Windows and iOS user. I would like to switch to 1password7, but the wireless sync is mandatory for me. Without this feature I have to stay on version 4. Unfortunately.
    I hope the WLAN sync function will be implemented as soon as possible.

  • Greg
    Greg
    1Password Alumni

    Hi @ManuelS,

    Thank you for chipping in! Please let us know why you want WLAN sync server added to 1Password 7 for Windows and sign up for our email here. That list is where we are keeping track.

    Thank you!

    Cheers,
    Greg

  • lebowski
    lebowski
    Community Member

    Hi,

    I think one of the reasons that some people get mad here is about the non-transparency with the current “subscribe to the WLAN Sync News mail list to make your vote count”-solution.

    Nobody knows what the people have exactly written there (except you), nobody knows how many users exactly have answered and what are their reasons (except you), nobody knows how many percent exactly of the sum of all users are represented where (except you).

    Please be additionally aware of the fact that not everybody who wants this feature maybe wanted to post here and argue with the developers. Some people just want this, but they do not want to create long posts or e-mail signups. Furthermore this is an only English speaking forum. Not every user may be familiar enough with this language to make a good posting here or in the signup list. There may be certain reasons for people for not interacting with this issue.

    I would like to make you take a look here:

    https://community.fitbit.com/t5/Feature-Suggestions/idb-p/features

    This is the feature suggestions forum of the Fitbit Company. You can say want you want about their products but they have a smart and very transparent solution for collecting feedback from their users regarding future developments.

    Please check if it is possible to make some vote action here inside of the forum, and make this vote sticky like this thread here. I think we may get interesting results from this.

    Kind regards
    Dude

  • Lars
    Lars
    1Password Alumni

    @lebowski

    Nobody knows what the people have exactly written there (except you), nobody knows how many users exactly have answered and what are their reasons (except you), nobody knows how many percent exactly of the sum of all users are represented where (except you).

    Well, right. We're the people who will wind up doing the work to implement WLAN sync, should we get enough interest in it, and that means we're the ones who need to see that data. Our experience so far in this thread is that there is a small number of users (remember that 1Password's overall user base is in the millions -- I'm using that as the reference, not compared to other threads here) who are VERY vocal about this subject, rather than a large number of users. That's great -- we're passionate about security in general and 1Password in particular as well, else we wouldn't be doing this. And we're (truly) thankful to each one of you who have taken the time to share your views and your wishes with us in this thread -- and to sign up for the WLAN Sync newsletter. But, as our Chief Defender Against the Dark Arts, jpgoldberg said in an earlier post in this thread:

    {We are} reluctant to say how many people have signed up because {we} don't want to encourage ballot box stuffing. But if we assume that for everyone person who has, there are another 500 people who feel similarly, we are still looking at substantially less than 1% of 1Password users. Because there is necessarily a lot of guess work, we're not going to say that we require X threshold. It's just that this is information that also goes into where we allocate resources. (Again, if we end up with reason to suspect ballot box stuffing, we will just end up dismissing the count altogether. We're not going to end up with a feature called "Syncy MacSyncface").

    We're just not interested in having a lengthy argument here over what constitutes a "significant"-enough portion of our user base to implement WLAN Server in 1Password 7 for Windows.

    I did notice in a much earlier post in this thread that you mentioned you're using an Android device -- that means you're able to use Folder Sync instead of WLAN, something that's not available to those users who have Windows PCs and iOS devices. If your main goal here is to keep your data "off the cloud," that's something you might be interested in looking into, as Android provides the means to sync to a local folder. Hope that helps. :)

  • kermit4karate
    kermit4karate
    Community Member

    “Nobody knows what the people have exactly written there (except you), nobody knows how many users exactly have answered and what are their reasons (except you), nobody knows how many percent exactly of the sum of all users are represented where (except you).”>

    @lebowski Bingo. I completely agree and couldn’t have said it better myself. They have an interesting take on security through obscurity.

    I believe it lets them be secure in the knowledge that they’re making the right decision...based on an obscure, fundamentally flawed means of assessing the true level of interest in WLAN sync or something similar.

  • Lars
    Lars
    1Password Alumni

    @kermit4karate - we've already gone through this: "assessing the true level of interest in WLAN sync" means taking the state of things as they are now, not spamming our entire mailing list with an uninvited "educational" piece about what WLAN Sync is and the potential perceived advantages it holds, and then asking who's interested.

  • exitstrategy
    exitstrategy
    Community Member
    edited October 2018

    too bad there is no popcorn smiley...
    i am always torn if i enjoy the discussions here in this particular thread or if i am a masochist to keep on reading the ever revolving discussion.
    its sort of a guilty pleasure for me to keep reading here....

  • Lars
    Lars
    1Password Alumni

    @exitstrategy - I'd go with the latter. As jpgoldberg said several pages ago, no new ground is being broken here, and hasn't been for multiple pages. Part of our job in this forum is often to answer the same questions/issues repeatedly, we understand that. It would be great if everyone who visited were not only able to search for but also able to find previous discussions that covered the issue they were having, but often that's not the case. So we're more than happy to answer questions or help people with issues that have been addressed multiple times already.

    This thread's a little different, though: it sits dormant for days, even weeks at a time...but because it's been pinned to the top of the board in a way other threads have not (since it originally contained an announcement regarding WLAN Sync), people stumble across it in ways that they just don't with most other threads, unless those threads happen to be at or near the top of the list when they visit. So it's already artificially getting more traffic than it otherwise would were it not pinned to the top of the Windows forum. Yet even that unusually-prominent spot isn't enough to keep this from being a relatively low-traffic thread. You're more than welcome to keep a reminder set up for it...but I can't, on a personal level, imagine a new visitor getting much out of reading past the first page or two of this beast. :)

  • kermit4karate
    kermit4karate
    Community Member

    “Yet even that unusually-prominent spot isn't enough to keep this from being a relatively low-traffic thread. ”>

    @Lars LOL. How unexpected? So...a sticky forum post doesn’t get more traffic because it’s sticky? I wonder if that’s because 1) most customers and would-be customers rarely ever check product forums, and 2) most customers don’t make their way to forums by visiting the home page where they can see which threads are “sticky.”

    I’m with @exitstrategy . 😊

  • spuch
    spuch
    Community Member

    @kermit4karate - Please stop spamming this thread! I think you made your point very clear and although I'd like to get WLAN sync back as well your ongoing comments with the same content are annoying and the ongoing confrontation will not make the situation any better.

    Thanks.

  • kermit4karate
    kermit4karate
    Community Member

    "Please stop spamming this thread!"

    @spuch I'm not spamming this thread. I'm a former customer who still has a strong interest in the product, and my comments are no less snarky or condescending than those of @Lars with his emojis, and I'll quote. Mind you, this is from a company representative:

    "You're more than welcome to keep a reminder set up for it...but I can't, on a personal level, imagine a new visitor getting much out of reading past the first page or two of this beast. :)">

  • Lars
    Lars
    1Password Alumni
    edited October 2018

    @kermit4karate

    So...a sticky forum post doesn’t get more traffic because it’s sticky?

    No, a sticky forum post gets more traffic than it would otherwise get, because it's sticky. It may be true that most people find their way here via means other than opening the front page (such as via Google search or the like), but that's just as true of this thread as it is of any other in here -- and this one has the benefit of being a sticky post, which others do not. Yet, as anyone looking back in the thread can see, the first post in this thread today was from lebowski -- who's also a repeat poster in this thread, followed by you and exitstrategy. And that's it: prior to that, the most-recent post from a new poster was Sept. 29, more than two weeks ago. So, not exactly a high-traffic thread, despite the unusual prominence on the front page combined with the ability of anyone searching Google to find it.

  • kermit4karate
    kermit4karate
    Community Member

    “Yet, as anyone looking back in the thread can see, the first post in this thread today was from lebowski -- who's also a repeat poster in this thread, followed by you and exitstrategy. And that's it: prior to that, the most-recent post from a new poster was Sept. 29, more than two weeks ago.”

    Right, because this forum is completely unrepresentative of the actual percentage of current and potential customers interested in WLAN sync for all of the many reasons the few of us actually participating on this thread have repeated multiple times. Sigh...

  • AGAlumB
    AGAlumB
    1Password Alumni

    @kermit4karate: Repeating yourself ad nauseam is not only a waste of your own time but also others here with a legitimate interest in this topic. This thread has far less traffic (by more than a factor of 10) than those requesting a native Linux app, and we haven't built that either. But that's really beside the point.

    Just to clarify, this forum is a platform for technical support for 1Password. This discussion is to elicit feedback on why you want WLAN sync. Put another way, if you're not doing one of these things:

    a. Making us aware of your reason* for wanting WLAN Server in 1Password for Windows

    or

    b. Seeking help with 1Password

    then unfortunately neither are you contributing to this discussion nor can we help you. Unless you've been holding back all this time, *we're already very much aware of your wishes. And if you're not using 1Password at all, there isn't anything we can do to assist you anyway. You're doing everyone a disservice by continuing to troll, distracting from the topic at hand, seeking attention for yourself at the expense of the larger discussion and your fellow commenters, who I can only imagine have participated here to have _their_ voices heard on this matter, not to provide _you_ with an audience. It's time you move on.

    I'm leaving this discussion open in case others who have not yet weighed in wish to do so, but if you continue in your efforts to monopolize this thread I will close it and we will rely solely on newsletter signups. I hope that you'll respect the time and attention of everyone here — including yourself — and refrain from further posts unless you have something new and constructive to add; but, if nothing else, if you really do care about this issue, I hope you'll leave well enough alone and stop being disruptive so this discussion can continue on unfettered, and others can let us know why they want this feature:

    On WLAN Sync in 1Password 7

    Please let us know why you want WLAN sync server added to 1Password 7 for Windows.

    Thanks.

This discussion has been closed.