Hi. I’ve been using BW happily for almost 12 months on my PC, my iPad and my iPhone.
This morning I looked to the top of the screen in Chrome to sign into a site but the BW icon wasn’t there. I searched on ‘Bitwarden’ on my PC and it didn’t seem to find anything. My subscription doesn’t expire until later this month and I can’t understand what’s happened. Fortunately I could log in because I have a record of my Master Password, but as I was logging in I received a message to say that BW didn’t recognise my device. However, this is the PC I’ve been using it on for almost 12 months.
Does anybody know what might have happened? It’s a bit worrying because clearly my BW account contains a great deal of confidential information.
I believe that what you are describing may all be due to “normal” issues. The unrecognized device warning is a new feature, which is enforced when logging in if your account does not have Two-Step Login enabled. You should have received a verification code sent to your email address, which you can use to complete the login process.
The disappearing browser extension icon is most likely a result of your Chrome browser automatically disabling the Bitwarden extension. In the Chrome browser address bar, enter chrome://extensions/, and verify that the Bitwarden extension is still installed (but likely disabled). Click the slider to re-enable the extension; you will most likely be prompted to approve some permissions that will allow the extension to display notifications, etc.
This is all expected behavior and nothing to worry about, although I can see how it would be concerning if it all occurred at once.
Hi there, and many thanks for helping. I appreciate it
You’re right that Chrome had disabled the extension. I was going into extensions to see whether I could set it up again when I found a message saying that it was disabled until I accepted new permissions. I accepted them and it appeared again. What a relief!
I’ll have to look further into the two-step login thing. I did see an email a while ago saying it was being introduced but also saying that it wouldn’t be a problem for those with ready access to their email.
This means that the password for logging in to your email account must be stored outside your Bitwarden vault, and that any 2FA required for logging in to your email account must not be dependent on your Bitwarden vault (for example, if applicable, the password for logging in to the 2FA authenticator app that you use for accessing your email cannot be stored only in your Bitwarden account). Basically, you need to ensure that if you are simultaneously logged out of all Bitwarden apps and extensions, and also logged out of your email account (and also logged out of any 2FA authenticator app that you may use for your email account), that you will be able to get back into your email account.
