I can’t stress the importance of the master password in Firefox if you are one of the users who is letting Firefox save passwords for you so that you do not need to enter the password and username again when visiting the site at a later time. While this feature is surely comfortable and takes away the need to memorize usernames, passwords and corresponding sites plus the typing that has to be done when logging into a site it is a security risk.
Even more so if you have not set the master password. Anyone with access to your computer is able to go into Tools > Options and click on Show Passwords under the Security tab. What this does is that it lists all sites and usernames that Firefox has stored in its database.
Pressing the button ‘Show passwords’ in that new menu displays all corresponding passwords for all sites. Gmail, Blogs, Myspace, nothing is really safe. By taking a look at your passwords someone could also analyze patterns. If you were using the same passwords on all sites it is fairly easy to assume that your pop3 email account would most likely use the same password.
So, set your master password to be on the safe side here.
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Thanks for the heads up! Never realized firefox allowed to show passwords!
There is a master password cracker for Firefox available, so if you’re going to use a MP, try to make sure it’s a non-trivial one.
Thanks!
thanks for this martin.
i too did not know that you could show passwords in ff.
@kris: note to self: make complex password :D thanks for the heads up on this!!
@Kris: A combination of numbers, capitals and non-caps all in a 10 character word should be solid?
Thanks for this tip.
Firefox should do a better job letting users know about this ‘feature’.
Great tip. Never knew it! And with my luck my crazy coworker would try and get my stuff.
yesyes i knew about this, but I got to tired of typing the password over and over again so I disabled it x) Doesn’t matter for me because all my friends coulnd’t propably find the options :P
@Chris & WizzKid: Complexity does not make a difference. Its a security hole in firefox and has nothing to do with the strength of your password.