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Wow. Interesting reading through the top rated HN comments on this. I'm obviously in the minority: This is an incredible value to normal humans who are not i

Wow. Interesting reading through the top rated HN comments on this. I'm obviously in the minority: This is an incredible value to normal humans who are not in the tech field. This password manager will help them proactively discover a stolen password. This is a powerful step forward for normal people who don't have any grasp of how bad the security situation is in the world. I know this isn't perfect for technicians, but I would recommend this as worthy of subscription for my family members who I love but for whom I am unwilling to provide IT support.

crispinb 9y ago
> This is an incredible value to normal humans who are not in the tech field Perhaps, but I have my doubts. I have stopped recommending 1P to non-technical friends & family because none of them can ever figure out how to use it (or remember for long enough to continue doing so). I have persuaded many to try it over the years, but literally only one of them has continued with it. That happened to be my mother (because I'm in frequent contact so can help her when she gets stuck). Everything I've witnessed leads me to believe 1P is primarily a tool for the tech savvy.
- signal11 9y ago
  I recommended 1P too, and for a long time my non-tech friends didn’t act on it, until they started hearing about password managers in the news. These days quite a few do use it. Depending on their tech skills they might require differing levels of hand-holding though.
  - crispinb 9y ago
    Your non-tech friends (or at least 'quite a few' of them) are clearly more tech savvy than mine ;) I've been using 1Password since nearly the beginning, and am really quite dependent on it now (so much so that I had a hard time coming to terms with an inevitable eventual move to Linux, until the release of 1PasswordX). So I'm an advocate. But I think the whole computer industry outside of a very few (notably Facebook and Amazon) has a grossly inadequate picture of just how little most people (including most of the so-called 'digital native' generations) know about the many computers in their lives. They don't use computers -- they are trained by a small number of commercial interfaces. It's extremely basic rat-in-maze stuff. The companies rightly lauded for their design skills targeted at us (this includes Apple and AgileBits) aren't even in this ballpark, and from everything I see and hear from them, they haven't a clue that they're not there.
- wool_gather 9y ago
  > none of them can ever figure out how to use it (or remember for long enough to continue doing so) Can you elaborate on this? I'm curious what they get stuck on; why do they find it any more complex than web browser bookmarks, or email?
  - crispinb 9y ago
    Some I can remember were: - not understanding the distinction between the password stored in 1password vs that on the server, eg thinking that changing the 1password one would change the original, thus locking themselves out ;) - being completely thrown by 1Password's distinction between password & login entries - assuming that changing the OS password would change the 1P master password automatically (really) - the iOS share menu-based version is particularly opaque to almost all of them, and only my mother ever got familiar enough with it to manage it when I'm not around (& this only because of my regular interventions over months) - not understanding (or noticing) the difference between updating a login entry and creating a new one, and ending up with a mess of contradictory logins - getting completely thrown by different logins for different subdomains There have been many more, these are just a sample of what I remember now. At a rough guess I'd say I've introduced 1Password to perhaps 20 non-tech users. Only one has continued. Many people simply lack any mental model whatsoever of how the different faces of software interact, so they get in a terrible muddle. > why do they find it any more complex than web browser bookmarks, or email? I don't think any use bookmarks (few people do, not even many use urls -- the vast majority in my experience use google to find sites. Every visit!). Email's a special case. It's been around a very long time, and is used throughout the day in many workplaces, so a much higher level of familiarity has built up. Even here though, it's only the advent of large scale cloud providers (gmail, exchange/outlook/live etc) that has made email truly usable for many. Before gmail in particular, I used to have to help all my friends and family with their email, at least during setup, and often again with things like managing inbox quotas etc (with POP). It is easier now, mainly because the common interfaces hide just about everything, and there are few enough dominant ones such that devices come preconfigured knowing how to connect to them.
    - wool_gather 9y ago

crispinb 9y ago

> This is an incredible value to normal humans who are not in the tech field Perhaps, but I have my doubts. I have stopped recommending 1P to non-technical friends & family because none of them can ever figure out how to use it (or remember for long enough to continue doing so). I have persuaded many to try it over the years, but literally only one of them has continued with it. That happened to be my mother (because I'm in frequent contact so can help her when she gets stuck). Everything I've witnessed leads me to believe 1P is primarily a tool for the tech savvy.

signal11 9y ago
I recommended 1P too, and for a long time my non-tech friends didn’t act on it, until they started hearing about password managers in the news. These days quite a few do use it. Depending on their tech skills they might require differing levels of hand-holding though.
- crispinb 9y ago
  Your non-tech friends (or at least 'quite a few' of them) are clearly more tech savvy than mine ;) I've been using 1Password since nearly the beginning, and am really quite dependent on it now (so much so that I had a hard time coming to terms with an inevitable eventual move to Linux, until the release of 1PasswordX). So I'm an advocate. But I think the whole computer industry outside of a very few (notably Facebook and Amazon) has a grossly inadequate picture of just how little most people (including most of the so-called 'digital native' generations) know about the many computers in their lives. They don't use computers -- they are trained by a small number of commercial interfaces. It's extremely basic rat-in-maze stuff. The companies rightly lauded for their design skills targeted at us (this includes Apple and AgileBits) aren't even in this ballpark, and from everything I see and hear from them, they haven't a clue that they're not there.
wool_gather 9y ago
> none of them can ever figure out how to use it (or remember for long enough to continue doing so) Can you elaborate on this? I'm curious what they get stuck on; why do they find it any more complex than web browser bookmarks, or email?
- crispinb 9y ago
  Some I can remember were: - not understanding the distinction between the password stored in 1password vs that on the server, eg thinking that changing the 1password one would change the original, thus locking themselves out ;) - being completely thrown by 1Password's distinction between password & login entries - assuming that changing the OS password would change the 1P master password automatically (really) - the iOS share menu-based version is particularly opaque to almost all of them, and only my mother ever got familiar enough with it to manage it when I'm not around (& this only because of my regular interventions over months) - not understanding (or noticing) the difference between updating a login entry and creating a new one, and ending up with a mess of contradictory logins - getting completely thrown by different logins for different subdomains There have been many more, these are just a sample of what I remember now. At a rough guess I'd say I've introduced 1Password to perhaps 20 non-tech users. Only one has continued. Many people simply lack any mental model whatsoever of how the different faces of software interact, so they get in a terrible muddle. > why do they find it any more complex than web browser bookmarks, or email? I don't think any use bookmarks (few people do, not even many use urls -- the vast majority in my experience use google to find sites. Every visit!). Email's a special case. It's been around a very long time, and is used throughout the day in many workplaces, so a much higher level of familiarity has built up. Even here though, it's only the advent of large scale cloud providers (gmail, exchange/outlook/live etc) that has made email truly usable for many. Before gmail in particular, I used to have to help all my friends and family with their email, at least during setup, and often again with things like managing inbox quotas etc (with POP). It is easier now, mainly because the common interfaces hide just about everything, and there are few enough dominant ones such that devices come preconfigured knowing how to connect to them.
  - wool_gather 9y ago