Your recovery kit
Your spare key, on paper. If every phone is lost, it gets you back in.
What it is
Eight groups of four letters and digits that the app makes for you once. You write them on paper, or save them as a file somewhere off your phone, like a USB stick. Never a screenshot or a note on your phone: the kit is for the day your phone is gone.
The app asks you to type part of it back straight away. That is only to check your copy is right, while you can still fix it.
Why you need one
The key to your vault lives only on your phones. If every phone is lost, we can’t open your vault for you. Nobody can, and that is the point: if we could let you back in, we could let in someone pretending to be you. The kit is your own second way in.
With your kit, a new phone gets back in after a 48-hour wait. During the wait, all your devices and your email are told, and any phone of yours that still works can cancel it with your fingerprint or a security key. So a thief who finds your kit can’t use it quickly, and you hear about it.
Your kit also brings back your Fort Knox things, as long as it was made after Fort Knox was set up. If it is older, the app tells you and asks you to make a new one.
How it differs from a password
| A password | Your recovery kit | |
|---|---|---|
| Who picks it | You | The app, at random, so it can’t be guessed |
| How often you use it | Every day | Hopefully never |
| How fast it works | At once | After a 48-hour wait, with every device told |
| Where it lives | In your head or a password manager | On paper, off your phone |
| What it opens | One account | Your whole vault, as a way back in |
You don’t sign in to Vando with your kit, and Vando never asks for it in a message or on a website. Only the Vando app asks for it, and only when you are getting back in or replacing it.
Making a new kit
You can replace your kit from Settings. A new kit always takes 24 hours, with your devices and email told, so someone with your phone can’t quietly swap your way back in. Your old kit keeps working until the new one is saved, then stops.
When the app asks for it
- Right after you make it, to check your copy.
- When you get back in on a new phone with no other phone to approve it.
- Straight after a recovery, to bring back your Fort Knox things (you type it again; the app never keeps it).
If the app asks for your kit at any other moment and you don’t know why, stop and don’t type it.
Last verified
Your laptop and Chrome
At the end, the Vando extension in Chrome on your laptop fills and saves logins, and every fill is approved on your phone, unless you trust the laptop for the evening.
How approvals work
When your laptop or an AI wants something, it asks your phone. You see exactly what it wants, and you say yes or no. Nothing happens until you do.