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Getting back into your account

If you have lost every phone and computer you were signed in on, the Recovery Kit you wrote on paper is the way back. Here is exactly what happens, so nothing is a surprise.

What you need

  • The recovery code from your Recovery Kit: the long code written in groups of four.
  • Any phone or computer with a browser. There is nothing to install and no file to copy across.

You do not need your email, and we will never send you a code by email or text. Those would be ways in for anyone who reaches your inbox or your phone number, which is exactly what this design avoids.

The steps

  1. Go to vaultforus.com/recover and type your recovery code. It never leaves your browser. We never see it, and we could not reset it for you if we wanted to.
  2. Set up a fingerprint, face or device PIN on the device you are using. That becomes your new way in.
  3. Then you wait 48 hours. Your account is not open yet.

Why the wait, and how to skip it

A paper kit is powerful on purpose: it is the one thing that works when everything else is gone. That also means anyone who finds it could try to use it. The 48 hours give your family time to notice and stop them.

During those two days, every device your family still uses gets an alert, and your family's email address gets one too.

If someone in your family can still sign in on a device they have, they don't have to wait. They open You → Security, see the recovery request, and approve it. You are back in within a minute.

If your kit was lost or stolen

  1. Freeze it. Anyone in the family, not only a primary member, opens You → Security on a device they still use and freezes the recovery. That stops it for good, and the device that started it never gets in.
  2. Make a new Recovery Kit from the same page, and destroy the old paper. Treat a kit that went missing as unsafe even if it turns up later.

If the recovery you froze turns out to be someone in your family after all, no harm done. They start again with the new kit.

Things we can't do

We can't read your documents, reset your recovery code, shorten the 48-hour wait, or let you back in without the kit. Not for anyone, ever, including if you ask us to. That is not a support policy, it is the encryption: we don't hold the keys, and nobody at Vault For Us can shorten a timer that exists to protect you from someone who holds your paper.

If you have lost the kit and every device, there is no way back into the locked contents. That is the cost of nobody else being able to read them.