After Mac, now Windows gets master password protection in Chrome

Himanshu Arora

Posts: 902   +7

chrome windows

The master password protection feature that Google recently implemented in Chromium for Mac has now landed on Windows as well. According to Google’s “Happiness Evangelist”, François Beaufort, the feature is now available in the latest Chromium build for Windows, suggesting that it will soon be included in the stable version of Google's Chrome web browser, though no official date has been announced for this.

Just like any other modern web browser, Google Chrome also offers to store user entered usernames and passwords for different websites. Once the credentials for a website are stored, the browser automatically fills them whenever the user visits the same website again.

Previously, users could easily access all the stored passwords in plain text by visiting chrome://settings/passwords or through Settings -> Show Advanced Settings -> Manage Saved Passwords. Many considered this as a major loophole because anyone with physical access to the computer could easily access these passwords.

The new feature asks users to authenticate themselves with their Windows account password before they can access saved credentials. Once the master password is entered, the protection will be lifted only for a minute. Thereafter, the password prompt will reappear and users will have to enter the master password again.

Undoubtedly, this is a welcome move from Google towards enhancing the security of Chrome. The move will definitely please those who have been fairly vocal in criticizing the lack of password-protected passwords in Google's browser.

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Meh. If someone got physical access to my computer I'd be resetting all my account's passwords anyway. They could always just visit the sites that have the saved information and access the data that way, without even looking up the passwords.
 
Meh. If someone got physical access to my computer I'd be resetting all my account's passwords anyway. They could always just visit the sites that have the saved information and access the data that way, without even looking up the passwords.
Thats only if you leave your account signed in to the websites by checking "Keep me signed in" checkbox at the login time. Furthermore as stated above, the master password will work only for a minute and then the browser will ask for it again, so there are no chances of someone getting to your password untill he is one of the 'Anonymous' members. ;)
 
Before you worry to much, this is practically the same on every browser.

Ya, this is news for me. With how much browsers copy each other, I figured this would be baseline by now. I first saw that setting so many years ago. A curious article, tis all.
 
Stick rrs feed live bookmarks in and I may use it.

I did not realize Crome did not have this feature, anyway the settings on chrome are such a dogs breakfast most people won't find it ayway
 
I found Chrome 22 somewhere laying around, I think I am going to stick with version 22 instead of 33 (or whatever the latest version is), I know I'll be sacrificing security, but too me performance matters more than anything, and lately Chrome has gotten so terribly bloated, it struggles with the web. This old version of Chrome is blazing fast compared to later vaersions of Chrome, and it renders pages in an easy on the eyes fashion, I don't ever see that reticulated pattern, ever. Anybody looking to fork Chrome should grab Chromium 22's code base and work from there, only improving security and performance, no new features, new features are f'n evil, man. The features race always ends up adding bloat to what used to be excellent pieces of software.
 
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