Logins for several people
When a whole team needs accounts in a new service, choose Logins for several people in your vault. Give the service a name and a website, choose where the logins are saved, and paste one line per person: their address, and if you like a username and a password. Up to 50 people at a time.
For the passwords you choose one of three: PineKey generates one for each person, you type them in the list, or each person chooses their own when they open their link. PineKey saves one login per person in the vault or team collection you chose, and sends each person their own link.
The logins stay with you, so you can enter them in the service they are for. You see every password, also the ones people choose themselves; in that mode the page they open tells them so.
One login for one or more people
To hand out a login you already have, open it and choose Share with a link. Enter one or more addresses, and each person gets their own link to the same login.
How the links work
The details are encrypted in your browser before anything is sent, with a new key for each link. The key is in the part of the link after the # sign, and browsers do not send that part to the server when the link is opened. PineKey stores only the encrypted copy. When PineKey emails the links for you, each key passes through our server on its way to the mail service and is not kept; when you copy the links and send them yourself, the keys never reach us. Either way the email holds a link, not the password.
A link works for one, seven or 30 days, as you choose. It is used up only at the last step, so closing the window halfway does not lose it. Once it is used, or when it expires, the encrypted copy is deleted. Under Settings, Shared links, you see every link you have created and whether it is used, and you can withdraw a link that has not been used yet. Attached files and the item’s history are not shared.
What the recipient does
The recipient opens the link and chooses Save in PineKey or Show once. With a PineKey account they sign in, and the login is saved in their vault, encrypted with their own key. Without an account they can create one in the same window, with the address the email went to; no separate sign-up mail is needed, because the emailed link carries a token you as the sender never see.
When they choose their own password, they set it on the same page, with or without saving the login in PineKey. The password is encrypted in their browser so that only your PineKey can open it, and it lands in your copy of the login the next time you open Shared links.
Limits
Once someone has seen a login, PineKey cannot stop it from being copied. Anyone who can read the recipient’s email can open the link, so send it to an address only the right person reads. And when a person later changes their password in the service, your copy does not follow; write in the login that it is a starting password if the service lets people change it.
In short
- A login and a link for each person, from one list
- Generated passwords, your own, or each person chooses
- You keep every login to set the service up
- Each link works once, for one, seven or 30 days, and can be withdrawn until it is used
- PineKey stores only encrypted copies