Sandboxed application can't communicate with browser extension

Hi @ASMad, thank you for raising these concerns with us. There's a lot to address here; I'll do my best.

I have this issue on Linux - Ubuntu 21.10. Here's the issue: when you need to add another account to the Linux desktop app (at least when you can't get into the first account and hence you had to create the second) you can't.

This sounds distinct from what other folks in this thread have reported, which has more to do directly with sandboxing features present in Linux. Let me know if I'm misunderstanding, though. And whatever the cause of your issue, our team will be happy to help you resolve it. You can reach us at support+linux@1Password.com for in-depth troubleshooting. 👍

And now, my rant because I used to love you(1password) and talk you up to everyone and now you anger me greatly

First, thank you for the long-time support - it means a lot to us! And I'm sorry to learn that you're feeling this way about our approach currently. I hope to address your concerns here.

I found I can't have 1Password without putting all my passwords in the cloud. It scares me shitless to have the passwords that control my life in the cloud.

I get that. I'm not sure how much you're familiar with our security design regarding this, so forgive me in advance if I'm sharing things you already know. Otherwise, I hope this is helpful. 👇

It's worth asking, "what exactly is securing your data, when it's in the cloud?"

In our case, our security experts looked over the options and went with an encryption-based approach. This means that your data (which is present on your local devices, as well as in our servers) is chiefly protected by encryption, not authentication.

In short, if someone doesn't have both your account password AND your Secret Key, they can't decrypt your data. Since you're an engineer (cool!), I'll provide both the short summary of our security model:

https://support.1password.com/1password-security/

as well as our more in-depth technical whitepaper here:

https://1passwordstatic.com/files/security/1password-white-paper.pdf

A TL;DR of our model is: "We don't want the security and privacy implications of us being able to decrypt your data. So we have provided no means for ourselves to do so. This also makes things way way harder for an attacker."

This is even the case in situations where an end user might understandably think that they're somehow decrypting their data on our servers. For example, if you sign into 1Password.com, you can look over your items, and there are your passwords, plainly displayed on the screen. This seems like you're looking at a decrypted version of your data on our servers. Can't we see it if you can see it? Not so! All the decryption happens client-side, in the browser session. We never see your decrypted data, ever. Again, this is by design.

It's worth pointing out a couple extra additional security-salient things as well:

1. 1Password has never been hacked
2. Even if we are hacked, we have designed the app not to share the critical security ingredients - your account password and Secret Key - that are necessary to decrypt your data.
3. We threat model different type of attack scenarios, and design our infrastructure, the app itself, and our internal practices so that if (or when) a breach occurs, it won't impact the security and integrity of your data, and that issues of availability will be limited as well - because your data is cached locally on your devices, and the decryption process occurs only there.

Also, regarding audits and other forms of security testing, besides our own internal reviews we are also regularly pen-tested by external security firms. We also just announced the largest bug bounty in Bugcrowd's history here.

Of course, there's no such thing as completely impenetrable security, but we do our best to raise the standard as high as we possibly can, such that the balance of probabilities that a compromise of user data will happen is very very small.

I have 0 issue with paying for a software that made my life so easy. I have a real problem with the subscription-ization of modern life and the implications for IP and the model of corporate servitude it depends on.

I can't really speak to the broader critique here. But I can say that we'd love to make things easy for you again, and that our focus remains on building the most secure and performant app we can, and providing world-class support for you as well. That's part of what recurring revenue from a subscription makes possible. You can probably think of other security-oriented apps that use a similar model, and in any case we intend to keep ourselves in line with customer priorities, first and always. We also find it to be far preferable to other models (like selling customer data) which are incompatible with our ethos.

I went to make a new account. I can't log into it in the 1password app on Ubuntu because it still has the old account and no way to add a new one.

We should likely be able to help you with this - you can find our Linux team (including myself) at support+linux@1Password.com. We'll do our best to expedite a solution for you!

I figured if I could get the app and the browser, where I'm logged in, to talk to each other the app could pick up the new account.

Ah, now I understand. Your most likely path to success here, if you're sure you can't remember the password for that old account, is to get a successful sign-in on the desktop app with the new account. After which, the browser extension (sandboxing issue notwithstanding) will acknowledge that account and things will work across the board.

Could I please get confirmation that when I delete the original subscription account I made that the billing will also be turned off for it?

My understanding is that this is correct, but I'd also be happy to connect you with our Billing team to ensure everything is taken care of. We never want to bill you for an account or service you're not using!

This one went a bit lengthy, but I thought the concerns you raise here are valid, in addition to the technical snarl, which we'd love to straighten out for you. I hope this conversation goes some way to showing that you're still our priority.