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Chrome 34’s password manager can save your bank passwords

Chrome 34’s password manager can save your bank passwords
Jonathan Riggall

Jonathan Riggall

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Banks, and other sites that have a heightened sense of security normally evade browsers that ask to save passwords. Chrome 34‘s password manager ignores this by default, so your passwords for these site will be saved.

Websites that include the code autocomplete=’off’ normally sidestep password managers, forcing users to enter them every time they access a site. This has the advantage that anyone else using your computer can’t access your bank account, for example. But the new Chrome 34 ignores autocomplete=’off’ by default, if users have the password manager enabled.

The Chrome team’s view is ‘that this is very important for user security by allowing users to have unique and more complex passwords for websites.’ They also point out that ‘this does not affect non-password fields’, so it may be you still have to manually enter some information to access your secure sites, although it very much depends on how those sites are designed.

While it’s true that you are more likely to choose a complex password if Chrome will remember it for you, this does mean you have to entrust Chrome with that information. If you use Chrome Sync, you also have to trust that information will be safe being sent across Google’s servers.

You can choose to turn off ignore autocomplete=’off’ in the password manager, but it’s unlikely that normal users would actually do that.

This feature does make it easier to use complex passwords, but at the same time means they will be saved by Chrome. Online services such as banks would be more secure if you simply use a complex password and remember it, as your head is less likely to be a victim of hacking than a server or computer.

Source: Geek.com, Chromium Dev Group

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