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First Steps
A vault is a safe place to store all your passwords and other confidential data. Just like a real vault, your password vault also has a key – the master password. You need to define this when you create a new vault.And as in real life, you can have more than one vault.
In the list of vaults, simply click on the “+“ sign, choose a name and a password for your vault – and you’re done.
And don’t forget to create spare keys for your new vault at the same time! That way, you can reset your master password, in case you forget it. See also “How do I create a spare key to reset my master password?”
Open a vault and click on the “+“ sign, then select the appropriate data type and enter all the necessary data.
By clicking on the menu icon in the upper left corner of the dataset list or by swiping your display from left to right, a menu will open for further setting options, help and information.
You can change the language in the menu under “Settings“. By default, PHNX is displayed in the system language specified for your device (or in English, if the system language for PHNX is not yet available).
Master password & vaults
The name of a vault is defined when it is created. It can be changed later in the menu by clicking on its name at the top of the screen directly underneath the vault icon.
Creating a spare key for a possible master password reset is child’s play with PHNX. All you need to do is select the item ”Vault security – Reset the master password“ in the menu. Here you can create one or several spare keys.
To create a spare key, you may choose from two combinable authentication methods: question & answer pairs or by naming files on your device which PHNX uses to create a hash value to compare with in future.
See „What can I do if I forget my master password?“
In this case, PHNX offers you the option to reset your password.
To do this, you need a spare key. This you must define beforehand in the menu under the item ”Vault security – Recover the master password“.
Importing vaults into PHNX serves two purposes:
- Firstly, to restore a previous backup of a vault and,
- Secondly, to download a vault you have created on another device from a cloud-based exchange directory to use it locally.
Synchronization & Cloud Services
You can use PHNX on all your iOS (version 9.3 and higher) and Android (version 4.1 and higher) devices. We are currently working on browser plugins for Windows and MacOS.
To do this, you can synchronize your vault. Select ”Vault synchronization“ in the menu and indicate which cloud service you would like to synchronize your vault with. Any change to your local vault will now also be stored in the cloud. To use the vault on another device, simply import it there into your list of vaults.
At present, the following cloud services may be used for synchronization and backup:
Android: Dropbox, Google Drive and OneDrive
iOS: Dropbox, Google Drive, iCloud and OneDrive
Security aspects
We strictly adhere to the specifications of the “Security Made in Germany“ trust seal. PHNX stores all your data with 256-bit encryption (AES Advanced Encryption Standard).
This is today’s most secure globally recognized standard. Vault security depends on the quality of the master password, no matter where in the cloud the vault is stored.
All entered data are protected and managed by PHNX. You have full control over where your data is kept. By default, data are stored locally on your device. If you wish, you can also store your vaults in the cloud to keep them synchronized across several of your devices. Under no circumstances will your data be stored on our servers.
You can store backup copies of your vault locally on your device or upload them to a cloud storage of your choice. To do this, use the item ”Vault security – Backup/Restore“ in the menu.
To restore a vault, close the current vault and import the desired vault file (BACKUP_Vaultname_Date_Time) from the respective location (locally or in your cloud directory).
With the password generator, you can have the system propose secure passwords when you create or modify an account yourself, but also as part of the automated password change process. If you don’t like a suggested password, simply let PHNX propose a new one. To do so, simply click on the grey “lightning” symbol to the left of the password input field.
Click on the “eye” symbol right next to it to display the suggested new password. You are free to change the criteria for generating passwords (e.g. password length or type and number of characters) in the menu under “Vault security – Password generator”.
Functionalities
The round button shows you two things:
• Firstly, if it’s time to change your password (the button is then red, not green)
• Secondly, if an automated password change is available for this account (the button is then not outlined in color, but colored in)
Your password is current and the automated password change is available.
Your password is current, but there is no automated password change available.
Your password is not current, a password change is due.
Your password is not current, an automated password change is due.
You can perform a full text search within the vault by clicking on the magnifier glass icon in the upper right corner of the dataset list.
The password change feature is always started manually. You may either select your own new password or have the password generator create one for you. After that, the process runs automated in the background. You might be prompted to intervene manually, e.g. if a captcha is displayed, before the process can continue. The new password will be stored in your vault again at the end of the process.
The number of websites allowing this is being increased continuously. For all other portals use convenient functions to support a manual password change. Read more under “What does manual password change mean?”
In case an automated password change is not available for a specific website PHNX will support you in performing a manual password change as conveniently as possible.
In order to change a password, log into the specific website via PHNX and go to the page where the password change is performed. Here you will usually be asked to enter your username and old password and enter a new password twice.
Via the three-point menu you may copy username and password stored in your PHNX vault for the respective website and fill in the fields. The menu item “Manual password change” reveals a footer which automatically generates a new secure password that can be copied and inserted using the icons shown. After having changed the password successfully you store it in your PHNX account by pressing the “Save” button. Future logins will then be performed using the new password.
For each of your internet accounts, you can define whether your password should expire after seven days, one month or six months or whether the age of your password should not be considered at all. If the time interval has expired, PHNX reminds you to change your password. This guarantees that your passwords are never out-of-date.
You can delete a vault from the vault list by swiping to the left. To confirm your request, PHNX will ask for your master password.
You can delete a dataset from the list by swiping it to the left or via the item “Delete account” in the three-point menu, when you are in detail view mode.
In the list of your datasets, click on any entry and hold for a couple of seconds until multiple choice checkboxes appear on the right. The selected datasets can now be deleted, categorized, exported to a CSV file or copied or moved to another vault.
By repeatedly clicking the sort icon in the upper right corner of the list view, you can sort the standard alphabetically sorted list according to the following additional criteria: creation date, dataset types, categories and automated password change.
Clicking on the filter icon shows you the filter criteria according to dataset type or category.