Comments on: Your passwords are showing…

By: Spencer Snyder

Spencer Snyder — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 23:58:38 +0000

chris is a good person he has never been in trouble before leave him alone.

By: Sulcalibur

Sulcalibur — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 15:54:09 +0000

Good call, people should know about this as some shifty person could look at someone elses passwords and notice a pattern for future abuse.

I’ve started using Lastpass now though.

Ref: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/8542

So far it seems pretty damn decent.

By: Racheblue

Racheblue — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 17:47:04 +0000

Hi there,

I stumbled here from there: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/11/22/30-more-excellent-blog-designs/

If you unclick the Remember Passwords For Site box then no passwords will be saved. Isn’t this the easiest option???

Rache

By: Elliott

Elliott — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 22:46:56 +0000

Hey @Luke, thanks for your comment – there’s actually two backgrounds shown there,

Elevation by coffeelover,
http://interfacelift.com/wallpaper_beta/details/1188/elevation.html

and Lazy Days li by boss019,
http://interfacelift.com/wallpaper_beta/details/1232/lazy_days_ii.html

Check out the other wallpapers InterfaceLIFT – I downloaded a whole bunch of their desktop backgrounds and set them to shuffle.

@Tyler – you’re absolutely right, password security is very important. However for less-important passwords, like forum log-in details, this method of remembering passwords comes in handy. People will use the feature because it’s readily available, so it’s best that they know what they’re using.

@Peter Cooper and @jfno, you’re right, thanks :)

By: Tyler Hayes

Tyler Hayes — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 19:47:31 +0000

If you’re in an environment where you’re this concerned about someone sitting down at your computer and stealing your passwords there are a few things to consider:

1. It’s probably time to have a discussion with this person who you think will be stealing passwords.
2. If you don’t know the person and are just careless enough to leave your computer open, chances are the person who wants to steal your passwords knows a better way and can get around this system (I can think of plenty of apps and methods to steal passwords that are in fact more efficient and faster than this method).

What situation would this be useful in? This is like a prescription drug, it just cures the symptom. In reality, we should be trying to get people less reliant on their computer remembering their passwords and not writing them down on little sticky notes that are posted on their monitors.

By: Luke Anderson

Luke Anderson — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 19:42:08 +0000

Elliot, whats your wallpaper – you know with the sky and tree? Good post btw!

By: Peter Cooper

Peter Cooper — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 06:24:00 +0000

because it comes up ALL the time when youâ€™re using password-authenticated sites.

Seconding jfno above, it shouldn’t be coming up all the time. It typically appears once when your browser is freshly loaded. Perhaps you use Cmd+Q a lot instead of keeping your browser in memory all the time?

By: Mark O'Neill

Mark O'Neill — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 16:36:13 +0000

I also ran into this when I used "View Page Info" on a site with Firefox, and was surprised to see my passwords for that site shown to me. I'd imagine most users are naive about this. Firefox should really have a "Manage Passwords" button which is shown alongside those "Remember" and "Never for this site" buttons.

By: gio

gio — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 15:53:31 +0000

First time poster long time follower. Thanks for the great tip and taking the extra effort to put this post together. Keep up the good work!

By: Elliott

Elliott — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 15:41:24 +0000

@James: That says “CMD-,” which means the CMD key and the comma key :)

@Sam – good point! I guess saving passwords should be reserved for less-crucial sites.

By: James Pearson

James Pearson — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 13:49:10 +0000

Thanks for the top, just a quick note… to access preferences for Firefox 3 on Mac OSX Leopard its CMD, not CMD- (which is zoom out).

By: jfno

jfno — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 13:47:42 +0000

It doesn’t require the master password each and everytime you use one. It asks for it just once per instance run of FF.

@ceejayoz If it asked the master password to reveal the list, but not when you use them. Then the password would need to be stored in clear on your disk and would be pretty easy to retrieve.

By: Sam Brown

Sam Brown — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 13:24:34 +0000

I’d be less worried that someone could see my password in plain view within the ‘Saved Passwords’ dialog of the Security tab in the Preferences pane of Firefox than them actually sitting at my computer with direct access to said “secure” website!!

I’ve never understood the need to save a password in the browser.

By: Joana Franco

Joana Franco — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 13:03:22 +0000

Thanks man… this was a great tip and a major help!

By: ceejayoz

ceejayoz — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 11:57:52 +0000

If only Firefox let me require the master password only for revealing my password list instead of every single time I want to use a saved one…

By: Scott Purdie

Scott Purdie — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 11:56:19 +0000

Thanks Elliott, I used a master password but I didnt realise people could have seen all my passwords if I didnt have that set up! Cheers

By: Elliott

Elliott — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 10:46:25 +0000

@dinu: If you do, visit chrome://pippki/content/resetpassword.xul and click "OK" in the bottom-right corner. You'll lose all your saved passwords though :)

By: Elliott

Elliott — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 10:46:00 +0000

@dinu: If you do, visit chrome://pippki/content/resetpassword.xul and click "OK" in the bottom-right corner. You'll lose all your saved passwords though :)

By: dinu

dinu — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 10:41:11 +0000

what if I forget the master password ;)