Devices: who holds, who asks
Which of your devices hold the keys to your vault, which only ask, and what happens when you add a phone, add a security key or cut a device off.
The short version is on What Vando is.
Two kinds of device
| Holds your keys | Opens your things | Approves asks | Examples | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Your phones | yes, in the phone’s security chip | yes | yes | your Android phone, a second phone or tablet |
| Everything else | no | only by asking a phone | never | the Chrome extension, the web, the vando command, Claude Code |
A phone’s keys are made in its chip and never leave it. Each phone has its own. That is why losing one phone loses nothing while you have another, and why a stolen laptop holds no key to your vault: only what a trust window or a grant left on it, until that ends.
What an asking device may keep
Two things, both time-limited and both chosen on your phone:
- A trust window: a laptop may keep copies of your Easy logins until the time you chose, at most 8 hours. Your laptop and Chrome.
- A grant: a computer running
vandomay keep secrets you gave a program, locked to that computer’s own key, until the end time your phone set and signed. Vando’s server carries it and can’t read it or make it last longer. Give one secret for a time.
Nothing else stays on an asking device. Access windows compares the two.
Signing in opens nothing
Signing in with your email code proves who you are; it opens nothing. A new phone that has only signed in can ask to join, and that is all. It gets your things when one of your phones approves it (or from your recovery kit after 48 hours): a new phone.
Adding a phone
Your phone approves the new one by scanning its code. Approved with your fingerprint or face, and with a new phone whose security chip Vando could check, everything reaches it at once. Approved with your PIN, Easy things open at once and the rest arrive after 24 hours, with every device told and able to cancel. That wait stops someone who has one of your phones and its PIN from adding a phone of their own and taking everything.
Adding a security key
Your first security key counts at once when a phone of yours approves it. A later key counts at once when one of your existing keys taps to approve it; otherwise it counts after 24 hours. Every new key is told to your email and every device at once, and a key that is still waiting can be cancelled with one tap.
A new fingerprint
Adding a fingerprint to a phone doesn’t affect Easy or Just me. It does end that phone’s Fort Knox access, because a new finger could be someone else’s: the phone gets it back when another of your phones or keys approves, or after 24 hours.
Cutting a device off
In Devices, every phone and laptop is listed with when it was last seen. Cut it off and it can’t fill, approve or open your vault any more.
A phone that could approve is cut off after 24 hours, with every device told, and it works until then; changed your mind? Cancel it under Waiting changes. The wait is there so that someone holding one of your phones can’t quickly cut off your others. Your last phone can never be removed.
Safety check, in Settings, lists everything that can reach your account (phones, laptops, AIs) and can end all of it at once, except the phone in your hand.
Your computers follow your phones
A computer connected with vando keeps a list of your phones, so it can check that a yes really came from one of them. When you add or remove a phone, that list has to change too, and only a phone of yours can sign the change, with its fingerprint (never the PIN). Your phone shows Update your laptops when one is due. After a recovery, each computer has to be connected again: a new phone.
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