1Password for travel

Ten years, and Tom still has not switched

Let me admit something first: I am not the one who researches this. Tom is our technical department, and my job is to write, to book things and to trust that the login works when I need it. So when he tells me a piece of software has held its place for ten years, that means something, because he swaps tools happily and often.

Before 1Password he used KeePass, the open-source option. It did the job. Then 1Password took over, roughly a decade ago, and the subject simply stopped coming up.

The reason is almost disappointingly simple: it works. Every login sits in an encrypted vault instead of in Tom’s head or in a slightly altered version of the same password. Chrome and Safari fill in the right credentials, my iPhone holds the same vault his Mac does, and a new device joins in a few minutes.

There is no rescue story here. Nothing was stolen, no phone went missing. It just quietly makes the safer choice the easier one, every single day.

What changes on the road

Very little, and that is exactly the point. Travelling adds unfamiliar Wi-Fi, far more work from a phone, the occasional new device and a constant stream of bookings and accounts. The passwords we use at home stay available on the Mac and on both our phones, with no separate list and no falling back to the one password we can both remember.

Tom’s honest benchmark is his own desk. Every time he sets up a new computer at home, the entire vault is back within minutes. That is the test that convinces me. If it survives a machine swap in our living room, it will survive a rented apartment with tired Wi-Fi somewhere on the route.

For the accounts that matter we add two-factor authentication on top. The 1Password account itself still needs protecting, but a stolen password on its own gets an attacker nowhere useful.

Sharing without putting a password in a chat

Sharing turned out to be more useful than we expected. A login or a document can travel through a controlled link instead of landing in an email or a family chat where it then lives forever. The link can expire, which is precisely what you want for a holiday-flat code or an account someone needs for a single week.

We still share sparingly. But when access genuinely has to move between two people, it finally has a sensible route instead of the worst possible one.

The honest drawbacks

I asked Tom for a proper complaint and he could not produce one, which is either a very good sign or a sign that he stopped noticing years ago. The app has been reliable, the sync has worked, the browser integration does what it should.

The real trade-off is bigger than any feature: a password manager becomes the single most important account you own. Its master password, the recovery material and the second factor deserve genuinely more care than an ordinary login. And our decade-old account tells you nothing useful about what a new customer pays today, so that part is worth checking yourself.

• Give the account its own password, used nowhere else.
• Store the recovery material somewhere safe and separate.
• Set up every device at home, before you depend on it abroad.
• Check the current plans directly with 1Password.