Sooner or later you have to give someone a password: the Wi-Fi key for a guest, a shared tool login for a contractor, an API key for a teammate. The usual way, pasting it into email or chat, leaves a readable copy in search, backups and notifications for years.
What "secure sharing" should mean
- Encrypted before it leaves your device, so the service carrying it can't read it.
- Gone after it is used: one view, then deleted.
- Expires even if nobody opens it.
- Sent separately from the context, so intercepting one message isn't enough.
Use a one-time secret link
Potent Cipher's secret links do all four:
- In your vault, open a secret and choose Share, or write a new message to share.
- Choose how many times it may be opened (once is best) and when it expires.
- Optionally add a passphrase for the link. Send that by another route, such as a phone call.
- Copy the link and send it.
The secret is encrypted in your browser with a random key. That key is in the part of the link after the #, which browsers never send to any server, so we store only ciphertext we can't open. When the last allowed view happens, the encrypted copy is deleted.
Tips for sharing with a team
- Share access, not your own password. If the service supports separate accounts or scoped API keys, create one for the other person. You can then remove only their access later.
- Rotate after people leave. Anything you shared with someone who no longer needs it should be changed.
- Keep the master copy in your vault, not in the conversation where you shared it. (How to store API keys securely.)
Sharing a whole file
For documents, encrypt the file with a passphrase first, send the .pcipher file by any route, and share the passphrase with a one-time link.