Although sharing your passwords with others isn't usually recommended, sometimes you need to do so when guests are visiting your house or you have a contractor on site working on something for your business.
For this reason, 1Password has introduced a new feature (detailed in this blog post) that allows users of its password manager to share virtually anything from their 1Password vault with others even if they don't use the service themselves.
The company's new tool is called Psst! which stands for Password secure sharing tool and it allows users to generate shareable links from its software's share menu. By default, these links expire in seven days but you can also choose to let them expire after 30 days, 14 days, one day, one hour or after a single person views them.
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1Password users also have the option to let anyone with a link view an item in their vault or they can restrict sharing to only the people whose email addresses they've specified. When a user selects the “Get link to share” option in the company's password manager, they can send the link directly or through any channel they choose. This feature also allows them to share links directly through their operating system's built-in share menu.
1Password Psst!
When a recipient opens the shared link in their browser, they'll either be taken directly to a web view of the shared item if anyone is allowed to view the link or they'll receive an email with a one-time verification code if the person who shared the link initially specified the people they want to share with.
After verification, users who have received a link will see the web view of the shared item exactly as it exists in 1Password. This means if there are extra fields such as notes, security questions or anything else, a recipient will see those too. If a recipient is also a 1Password user, they'll be able to save a copy of the item directly in their own vault.
It's worth noting that when using Psst!, 1Password users aren't sharing an original item but a shared copy that is more like a snapshot of the item as it existed when it was shared. This means if you share a password with a contractor or guest, they can only view the item as it existed when shared. If it's changed afterwards, recipients won't be able to see the updated item, only the original copy.
IT admins worried about employees sharing passwords using this new feature can rest easy as well since all shared items appear in the software's Activity Log. Admins will be able to see the name of the shared item, who its shared with along with their IP address, the date and time it was shared, when the link expires, the email addresses of recipients, how many times each recipient viewed the shared item and the IP addresses of recipients that viewed an item.
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