Set Up Emergency Access for Your Passwords (Family & Teams)

Why you need this

Phones get lost, people travel, and emergencies happen. With emergency access, a trusted person can unlock your essentials if you’re unavailable—without sharing your master password.

Build your plan

• Pick a manager that supports emergency access or recovery workflows.
• Choose trusted contacts (1–3) and set reasonable wait times for approvals.
• Store recovery codes as secure notes and keep an offline copy in a safe place. How-to: The Right Way to Send Recovery Codes and 2FA Backups.

Practice the handover

• Test an access request so everyone knows the steps (cancel before full access if it’s a drill).
• Document the process (who to contact, where the offline copy is, what the wait time is).

Security hygiene

• Use strong passphrases for your main accounts: How to Create Strong Passphrases You’ll Actually Remember.
• Enroll two authenticators where possible so a single lost phone doesn’t lock you out. Recovery after loss: Lost Your Phone with the Authenticator? Do This Now.

Useful external references

• Bitwarden: Emergency Access 🔗
• 1Password: Emergency Kit 🔗
• NIST SP 800-63B (password guidance) 🔗

Related reading

Simple incident plan for leaks: The Simple Incident Playbook for Leaked Passwords

Help non-technical family share safely: Plain-English Guide for Clients/Family

Bottom line

Set it up once, test it, and tell your trusted contacts how it works. Emergency access turns lockouts into a non-event.

Secure One-Time Messages - Send confidential messages that self-destruct after being read once. Your privacy is our priority. →.