Signing back into the Community for the first time? You'll need to reset your password to access your account. Find out more.
Forum Discussion
jfruh
12 months agoNew Contributor
Searching for a string within a password
Hi there -- my credit card company sends me "dark web" alerts when some credentials of mine are discovered on dark web sites. They will show you the username used along with a short subset (3-4 characters) of the exposed password. I recently got a set of alerts where the password snippets make it clear that they're passwords I created using 1password. However, there doesn't seem to be any way within the 1Password app to search based on those snippets to figure out what login credentials have been exposed. I've seen other threads in this forum that say this functionality has been added in the 1Password 8 app but I've been trying it and it doesn't seem to work, even using 3-4 character snippets that I know are in passwords I have stored in 1Password. Is there something I'm missing about how to go about doing this? Thanks in advance.
1Password Version: 8.10.26
Extension Version: Not Provided
OS Version: 14.2.1
Browser: Not Provided
- 1P_Dave
Moderator
Hello jfruh! 👋
Thanks for the question! Are the characters that you're provided from your password consecutive or random? For example, if your password was "password" do you receive
***swor*
or do you receivep*s*w**d
.1Password includes a tool called Watchtower that will alert you if your password or login have been exposed in a breach, have you tried using it to check if there are logins that you need to change? You can read more about Watchtower here: Use Watchtower to find account details you need to change
-Dave
- jfruhNew Contributor
Hi Dave! The passwords are sent with only the last three characters displayed, so like *****ord.
I've gone in and done some searching in 1password for three-character end-of-password strings that I know actually are in there and no they are correctly coming up in search. I think I may have been doing it wrong previously -- it seems that if there's a letter combo only in a record's password, it doesn't autopopulate in the search drop-down but instead you have to click "Show all matching items" to see it. However, the letter combos I'm being sent by my credit card company are not coming up. Maybe I've already changed those passwords.
Watchtower is not showing me any compromised accounts. Not sure where my credit card company is pulling their data from.
- 1P_Dave
Moderator
Thanks for the reply. If the letters are consecutive, one after the other, then you can indeed search by typing those letters into the search field in the desktop app. Surround your letters with quotes like this
"ord"
. Then press Enter.If you're not seeing search results for certain search terms then it sounds like you don't have any passwords that include those characters saved in 1Password. It's possible that you've changed them since or they might predate your use of 1Password. I recommend that you reach out to your bank to get more clarity about how old the leaks that include those passwords are and if your bank can provide any more information.
Let me know if you have any other questions.
-Dave
- TAllgoodNew Contributor
I am in the same situation as jfruh --- a password was found on the dark web and the alert only contained a portion of the password: ***unt
1Password does NOT find "unt", even if I use double quotes or single quotes. I scrolled and eventually found it, so it is in my vault. But 1Password's FIND never found did.
Older posts referenced an advanced search, but I do not see that as an option for the Mac desktop version I am using [1Password for Mac 8.10.27 (81027003)]
Luckily, the 'dark web' password was unique to one site, and the account was no longer active.
Other suggestions for finding content in the password field would be appreciated.
- 1P_Dave
Moderator
Thanks for reaching out. The Find tool only looks through certain fields such as an item's title. Can you type your search term in the Search tool at the top of the app which searches through more fields like the password field:
Let me know if that works better. 🙂
-Dave