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Well, as you say OSX has the keychain (which is encrypted, and has command-line access tools). I think most Linux systems have something similar ('keyctl' on my system). I know nothing of Windows, but I would hope something analagous exists there too.

I mean, mail clients such as Thunderbird can be set up to safely remember passwords without storing them in cleartext, right? So clearly it's feasible...

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no, thunderbird and firefox store passwords in a sqlite database. unless you have its "master password" set (which encrypts the contents with that password) then everything is in cleartext.

What's more, if you have firefox or chrome set to remember your passwords, anyone with access to your computer can look at them through the browser's options menu clear as day.

if you're on a mac, you can move passwords to the keychain: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/keychain-serv...

otherwise, set a master password to encrypt the sqlite database and then make the password timeout after a short while: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/master-passwo...

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