TIL I was saving passwords in my browser for 5 years without thinking

Last month I was helping my mom set up a new laptop and she asked me how to remember all her logins. I opened my browser settings and saw over 200 saved passwords sitting there in plain text. Had a moment where I realized I was doing the same thing since 2019 - just clicking 'save password' without a second thought. What finally tipped me off was a coworker mentioning they got their accounts swiped after a browser sync glitch on a coffee shop wifi in Austin. Does anyone here use a dedicated password manager instead of browser storage?

3 comments

3 Comments

charlieh7413d ago

Honestly that coffee shop wifi story gave me chills because I had the exact same wakeup call last year. Tbh I never thought about browser sync glitches either, I always figured it was just as safe as anything else. I switched to a dedicated password manager after that and it honestly made me feel way better since you can lock it down with two factor and everything. Ngl it sucks having to manually change all your old saved logins but it beats waking up to a hacked email one morning.

patricia_hill6013d ago

Wait, at a COFFEE SHOP? On PUBLIC wifi? That's HORRIFYING. I never even THOUGHT about that being a risk with browser passwords.

the_drew13d agoMost Upvoted

Man the coffee shop thing is exactly what got me to switch too. I had my browser open on public wifi at a local cafe and some guy just sat down across from me with his laptop. I didn't think anything of it until later when I noticed my Netflix account was logged in somewhere weird. After that I bit the bullet and changed all my passwords over to a dedicated manager and it made a huge difference for peace of mind. It was a pain going through every site one by one but now I don't worry about public wifi at all. Plus having the app on my phone means I can generate strong random passwords instead of reusing my go-to ones (which I was totally guilty of).