1Password: Responding to the Conflict in Ukraine

It’s been days since 1password removed the app from Russian app stores. This blog post was supposed to address this.

There’s an elephant missing in the room: no mention of the app removal whatsoever.

> If you’re an existing customer in Russia, you can continue to use 1Password normally until the end of your current billing period

How is “use normally“ possible if there’s no app to download on your phone or tablet? You may need to restore your phone or intentionally temporary delete the app (there’re several reasons one could be forced to do it).

> As a result of the ongoing sanctions, many payment providers – including ours – have stopped processing payments with a billing address in Russia

Apple app store is working and apple accepts payments via russian MIR cards or via cellular operator balance account. So in-app purchases are working just fine (of all closed gardens and other stuff it’s an irony and a blessing that Apple still works here).

So 1password _chose_ to intentionally harm and to cut off all russian customers (including the ones that fled the country) and hadn’t the balls to admit it. The reason for that were not payments (they still work just fine, at least inside apple ecosystem). Moreover, 1password chose to remove the _only_ currently working payment channel — via apple in-app purchase — and thus deleted the apps from the app store to remove this loophole (and keeps silent about it).

> until the end of your current billing period

On the side note: that’s all we need to know about subscriptions. And having vaults inside the proprietary cloud (previous version supported private vault inside the icloud or dropbox and thus could work for several years depending on the ios breaking changes).

It’s really weird that there are actions first, public statement that won’t even mention app store removal after 3 days.

That is not what you want from a company that handles your most private and important data. I am incredibly disappointed and disillusioned with 1Password.

I do believe you may stop the service to anyone if you want to. It is the way you’re doing it is not worthy of 1Password I knew and loved for many years.

Just received an email with this:

> To reduce the impact on existing customers, we have decided that having the 1Password apps in the app stores is the correct course of action. The apps are now available through those distribution channels again

Thank you, guys.