Google Chrome offers a built-in password management tool that helps to store passwords, forms and credit card details. Chrome will offer to save these credentials when you enter on any website. Later, you can use these data to login or complete the form without remembering. This looks very useful, however it’s a big risk to ignore password management in Chrome. In this article, we will explain how to protect your saved passwords in Google Chrome.
Viewing Stored Password in Chrome
We have explained in our earlier article on how to view the stored passwords from Chrome. Anyone having your computer’s administrator password can get the details from Chrome easily. It is also possible to export all your passwords using Chrome experimental feature.
Hence, a single compromised computer admin password may lead to a huge financial disaster. Here are things you should do in order to protect saved passwords in Chrome.
1. Change Windows Password Regularly
When performing encryption on Windows OS, Chrome uses an API function that’s provided with Windows. The encrypted data will be decrypted only by specific user account. The master password is the password for your Windows account. So, once you are logged in to Windows OS, Chrome can decrypt your password data.
This essentially means people and applications having access to your Windows user account password can view the password data from Chrome. By regularly changing your Windows password, it will be harder for people to discover your login information.
2. Use Strong Passwords
It is understandable that people create passwords that are quite easy to remember. Password cracking software is getting more sophisticated. It can gain information from your name, address, family member names, social media updates, personal interests and others to guess your potential passwords. If you find that randomly generated passwords are difficult to memorize, you should know how to make your own secure password. A good password must contain at least 12 characters with a good mix of lowercase letters, uppercase letters, symbols and numbers. Create your own pattern that makes passwords appear random but contain an algorithm that is completely unique to you.
Use password generator tools to create passwords and ensure to check the complexity of your password is sufficient.
3. Don’t Use Passwords Repeatedly
This is dangerous practice that’s still implemented by many people out there. If you use the Internet often, you may already have login information for dozens of websites. It’s a dangerous situation if you use the same password for your email, banking website, online payment service, online credit card account and others. If a single password is compromised, your entire online presence will crumble like a domino effect.
4. Protection Against Phishing Attacks
Phishing can be effective for stealing your login credentials, if you are not careful. Phishing email messages often look very authentic. When you open the link in the message, the fake login interface appears perfectly genuine as well. If the password management tool doesn’t automatically suggest login information, then there’s a good possibility that you are being targeted by a phishing attack. You can evaluate the website to see whether it is genuine or not.
5. Avoid Computer Sharing
The first security measure is to avoid sharing your computer with unknown people. Whether you are at coffee shop or at your house, ensure to use the computer single handed. If you need to share, ensure that the person uses guest mode instead of normal or incognito mode. This will help to avoid sharing your profile data content and Chrome will not suggest any historical content from your profile history.
Also try to use your browser in a logged in mode to store all data under your user profile.
6. Use Password Management Tool
There are many password management tools available for Windows and macOS that helps to save all passwords in one place. The major difference is that these tools need a master password to unlock or view the content which is different than your computer’s administrator password. Also these tools sync the passwords across the devices to manage the logins and for fillings efficiently.
Conclusion
Browsers are the gate to many problems on your computer. In this online world, try to be safe and secure when using Google Chrome as your browser. Instead of wandering around the web and browsing unnecessary sites, try to strict to your needs. Only access the legitimate and proper sites to get details and buy items online. We hope all the above mentioned points can help you in protecting your saved passwords in Google Chrome.
Leave a Reply
Your email is safe with us.