The Steps
At this time I don’t have a video to accompany this step since it should be straight forward. But I may add a video later as needed.
Think about times you’ve needed to share a password with a spouse or a friend. It may have been as simple as letting visiting friends know your wifi password, or perhaps as critical as sharing the password to your bank account with a spouse. How have you handled it . Write it on paper and give it to them? Send it to them in a text message or in an email address? None of these methods are safe. There’s a misconception about hackers. Perhaps you’ve seen a movie where a business or person was hacked by a skilled computer hacker who broke directly into the computer system. That happens, but it’s rare. It’s much easier for a hacker to take advantage of an individual who was lax in how they protected their own security. To break into a corporate system, they’ll try too find a vulnerable user of the system who doesn’t protect their password information.
But there may be legitimate times when you need to share a login, so Proton gives you secure ways to do it.
A shared multi-user Proton Pass account.
In addition to the free individual account, Proton has couple and family plans that allow multiple vaults to be shared between members of the family. For example, it’s a good idea for spouses to share access to key information that may be needed for an emergency, such as insurance information or investment accounts. You likely will want to share the passwords to any streaming entertainment services, wifi passwords, etc. In these cases, it may be necessary for an individual member of the family to change the password to something more secure while updating the other family members for when they need access. That is the value of a couple (Duo) or family plan. These plans also typically have access to other services such as Proton Mail, Proton Drive and Proton VPN
But here we are talking about paid plans that require a subscription. This course is about the free version of Proton, so I’ll focus on what sharing options are available within the free account.
Sharing a Single Proton Pass account
In general this isn’t recommended. But if you are in a relationship with total trust for your partner, it is possible to share one account simply by having the apps installed on any computers or mobile devices. This would give either partner full access and control of the passwords. That could be very complicated in the case of a nasty break-up.
Sharing an individual login record or vault
Without upgrading or sharing a single free account, the other method involves the owner of the password account sharing a single record or a vault of records. If you wish to share a vault, it’s important to note that you have at most two vaults in the free version. So use that extra vault wisely. A couple of important notes about the record or vault sharing in Proton Pass.
It is a read-only share - the recipient of the share is unable to modify the record. They could potentially change a password in the system they’ve been given the password for, which could be a potentially dangerous situation for you since it would not update the record in your password manager, effectively locking you out.
It is time-limited. You can set a limit on the time that the login information is available, with a maximum time of one month.
It can be limited by the number of times the recipient can see the login information.
It could be used for the wrong reason if the recipient makes a note of what the login is.
If your login record has two-factor-authentication on it, they would not have access to the 2FA key, whether it’s your phone that must respond to a code. Of course, two-factor authentication could be a way to ensure that mis-use doesn’t happen (as described in #4). In that case when they log in, they would also have to call you to get the code from you.