How secure is it storing passwords in Chrome or Firefox? Are they stored locally and if Chrome/Firefox was open could anyone access the passwords or is there a master password needed first?
Thanks
Hi, here's a starter for 10 for FF:
Profiles - Where Firefox stores your bookmarks, passwords and other user data | Firefox Help
Password Manager - Remember, delete and edit logins and passwords in Firefox | Firefox Help
Reset your Master Password if you've forgotten it | Firefox Help
View and Delete Stored Passwords in Firefox
Useful review- 2018
Nine years on, Firefox’s master password is still insecure – Naked Security
Personally I prefer to use a password manager that is uniformly applicable across a range of browsers and devices- including my Android phone.
They are locally stored if you don't use sync. If you use sync they are encrypted, and uploaded to either Google's or Mozilla's servers to be able to sync to other devices. If you save them in Chrome you need to enter your Windows password before viewing them. If you use Firefox by default you can just click the eye symbol to view them, but you can enable a Mater Password for Firefox, which you need to enter before viewing any saved passwords. Both are as secure as you want. Syncing them doesn't pose much more of a risk than just keeping them local as I said they are encrypted, but as always, if a hacker really wants something they will find a way if it is on a server, or your local machine.
However like the other poster said a good password manager like Lastpass is a good idea.
I never use the browser itself to store passwords. I use a password manager.
There are many password recovery/ viewer tools like this:
https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/passwordfox.html
If they can get your passwords - so can malware that might get to run on your machine.
Thanks for the replies.
For my Windows machines I use a password manager - Roboform - but not synced to the cloud. I manually sync them since there's only three.
However we also use Linux and Android devices but not for anything really serious. Sometimes though say for browsing forums it would be nice to have a password manager for them but so far most of them I've come across require cloud accounts which I don't want.
In this respect Firefox may be ok since the Linux/Android devices are password protected at power on or from lock screen plus I could have a Master Password in firefox.
and then there was this published not all that long ago.
TrickBot malware mistakenly warns victims that they are infected
Grabs credentials.
I use a password manager.
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