Firefox: View and Protect Saved Passwords

Contributed by davak December 11, 2007  
Tagged: Mozilla Firefox

I am a password forgetting fool. Frequently I fish passwords out of firefox. This is also a nice little experiment to demonstrate how easy it is to find/steal passwords that have been saved within firefox. This tutorial will how to set a master password to protect all passwords within firefox from easy viewing.

By default, firefox does not even try to hide passwords. If you have local assess to a firefox installation, you can retrieve all saved passwords.

I’m showing the OS X firefox here; however, other versions of firefox work in a similar fashion.

1. Open Firefox
2. Within the Preference option box, select the Security tab.
3. Click Show Passwords

4. Click the Show Password button in the Remember Passwords dialog box that appears

5. Once you confirm you selection, your passwords will show.

If you want to protect your passwords…

– From the Security tab under Firefox Preferences, select Use a master password

– Set your master password from the dialog box that appears…