New Advanced Password Sharing Option - Trusted Contacts

Why is it unsafe to share passwords over the internet?

Sharing your passwords over the internet, whether over unencrypted email or messaging apps, is like sharing them out in the open. Anyone can see them, and you just can’t be sure they won’t end up in the wrong hands. You have no control over what may happen, including these scenarios:

• Man-in-the-middle attack. If your connection isn’t encrypted, then someone “sniffing” the traffic could easily read the messages between you and the recipient. What if one of those messages include your login credentials? Correct, the bad actor would be able to snatch them and get into your accounts without your knowledge. This is particularly likely to happen in public places where you may use unsecured public Wi-Fi.

Even if your connection is encrypted, there’s a theoretical chance that someone sitting in the middle could steal your public keys and decrypt your communication.

• The platform you’re using might not be as trustworthy. Did you know that email or messaging platforms without end-to-end encryption and zero-knowledge architecture can read your messages? Sometimes it’s not the hacker you should be scared of, but the messaging platform giving their employees access to your private conversations.

How does the Trusted Contacts feature work?

With the Trusted Contacts feature, you can protect your passwords from all three scenarios mentioned above. How? Before sharing your password with a friend or colleague over NordPass, establish an encrypted connection. You can imagine it as shaking hands before you exchange information - you need it to ensure that the person you are communicating with is trustworthy.

NordPass helps you to complete this “handshake” by using asymmetric encryption. That means only the recipient who holds both keys - the public and the private - can access the encrypted information. Once the secure connection is established you won’t need to read the same contact ever again, and now no one will be able to intercept your communication.

Why use Trusted Contacts?

Password sharing is one of the default features most password managers, including NordPass, offer to their users. When you share passwords over such a platform an encrypted connection between you and a receiver is established, during which you automatically exchange public keys. Your communication becomes secure and almost impossible to intercept. However, this leaves a theoretical chance that during an automatic key exchange a man-in-the-middle attack could be performed and your public keys could get snatched.

Trusted Contacts feature eliminates such possibility. By adding someone to your Trusted Contacts list you manually exchange public keys and confirm that this connection is trustworthy. This leaves even less of a chance for anyone to steal your keys and break your encryption. Therefore, Trusted contacts makes your safe password exchange even safer.

Learn how to add someone to your Trusted Contacts list by following this step-by-step guide.