Firefox username/password security

When you login to any site for the first time Firefox or Thunderbird will prompt you to save the password. If you say yes then your username and password will be offered to you next time you login. It's possible that everyone but me realises that unless you have set a master password in both programs these site usernames and passwords are then accessible to anyone who can login to your computer, no other credentials required at all.

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Master_password

I now need to look carefully at IE and Chrome to see how this situation is catered for. Input on that very welcome.

 

Obviously, remembering passwords is simply a convenience built into the browsers. You can opt not to have the passwords remembered or set exceptions in Firefox(see att'd). I'm sure you don't use the same logon for sites that you do for computer logon.

 

After using this for several months, I'm happy with LastPass.
Don't need the stuff in individual browsers.

Why Use LastPass

LastPass User Manual

 

This is a real oversight on my part, never looking closely enough at how easy or otherwise it might be to view my saved passwords in browsers. I'm usually fairly well organised so I've stopped the browsers from remembering anything at all and am not keen on using any third party app to do it for me either. Thanks for the suggestion though

 

If you've heard and read articles by Bruce Schneier, you recognize him as someone who knows a lot about security. He helped develop and still uses Password Safe.
https://www.schneier.com/passsafe.html
This might be worth looking at.

 

Thanks plodr, I'll note that link for the inevitable day my memory starts going awol