Put Your Passwords in the Vault

Keeping your personal information safe comes with a lot of complications. You need a password that’s complex but memorable. You need your financial info kept private but simple to access. And you need those important work documents secure but easy to share with teammates. If you feel like you require a personal assistant to help you keep it all straight, let us introduce you to 1Password.

Not only does the app manage passwords, but it also offers a digital vault where you can keep important data and documents safe. Here’s how it works.

You know the drill: Every time you set up a new account, you’re supposed to create a brand-new password, and make it complex enough that no one could guess it. Of course, it’s a struggle to come up with these hard-to-crack codes, let alone remember them, so a lot of us usually end up with a simple and easily crackable code. 1Password can help. Its Generate Password function lets you come up with an impossible-to-guess code or phrase, with however many characters or words you want. You can even specify if it should include numbers or symbols.

So how do you remember such an impenetrable code? Here’s the best part: You don’t have to, because 1Password does the remembering for you. Lock up all your passwords in the app’s super-secure vaults, then when you need the login to one of your many accounts, just tap the keyhole symbol. The only thing you need to enter is your 1Password master key—or set up FaceID or TouchID, and you’ll have access to everything you need with a quick touch or glance at your screen.

Now that you have access to 1Password’s storage space, which is secured by end-to-end encryption, why not lock up some of your other sensitive information so you can retrieve it whenever you want? 

Add photos of your passport or driver’s license for safekeeping in case the real documents are lost or stolen. You can then access them from any device that has 1Password on it. Or store your credit card number for easy access when you’re shopping online. For accessibility, you can even use voice control to easily access your information—say, for instance, to effortlessly copy your credit card info and paste it into a website or app at checkout.

Even the most confidential information sometimes needs to be communicated with others, so when you need to safely share data, 1Password makes it possible. Have classified documents you want to share with a colleague? Or logins that your whole team needs to access? Once you've set up a vault for sharing and made it accessible to everyone on your team, you can add new passcodes and documents to that vault from your iPhone or iPad whenever you need.

This feature is also great for families. Setting up shared vaults with everyone in your household to store passports and other personal data can make quick work of booking trips or can come in handy if your partner loses track of their ID. And if your aging parents struggle to remember passwords, a shared vault is an easy way to help. In fact, when you get everyone on board with the 1Password Families subscription plan, it’s like the whole family has a personal assistant, so you can forget about remembering everything else.