Communicating Passwords Securely

Written by Tom Shields on 10th January 2020.

If you want to share a password with someone it is recommended for security reasons to contact them directly (i.e. by phone or in person) however this may not be possible and it can be difficult to read aloud complex passwords. In these cases it can be better to send the password by email or SMS, but sending it as free text via these methods is not very secure.

To make this more secure you can use a secure password utility like this one; https://pwpush.com/

This utility allows you to enter your password and set a period of time and a number of views for which a secure link to this password will be made available. When you click the “Push” button it will create a URL that you can copy and send to the person you want to share the password with. The person can then simply click on the links to view the password and this link will expire after the set number of days or the number of views.

Some usage tips:

To make this as secure as possible it is recommended to communicate with the person first (i.e. via phone) to tell them that you will be sending a password link and then send the link on its own without stating that it is a password link in the same email.
Keep the number of days views limited but also consider that the person you are sharing with may require a little time to get to this and also more than 1 view to allow for issues when viewing it.. Typically 7 days and 3 views should suffice if sharing with 1 person.