Google Says Sorry After Passwords Vanish for 15M Windows User | Hacker News Reader

Google Says Sorry After Passwords Vanish for 15M Windows User

forbes.com

I wouldn't touch that Google password manager with a 10 ft pole, doesn't even have encryption enabled by default. I know taviso says browser password manager good and password manager accessed via browser extension bad, but the browser password manager is just lacking on almost every front.

Glad to see that Apple is going to bring password managers to the masses.

Will they have apps for non-Apple platforms? Otherwise how will they bring them to the masses

I don't believe we have any confirmation of Android, but there will be an app for Windows.

Which likely covers most of their bases, I imagine the crossover of people with iPhones and a Windows PC is far larger than those with a Mac and an Android phone.

But who knows, maybe we will see one for Android at some point.

> Will they have apps for non-Apple platforms? Otherwise how will they bring them to the masses

No, but it will be accessible by every law enforcement agency. /s

It is odd how passwords can be sometimes treated very secretly and othertimes you click "settings" "show saved passwords" and there they all are openly on display? Which is a godsend when sorting out elderly relatives but still weirdly disconcerting.

>However, working on the basis that there are more than 3 billion Chrome web browser users, with Windows users counting for the vast majority of these, it’s possible to come up with an estimated number. Google said that 25% of the user base saw the configuration change rolled out, which, by my calculations, is around 750 million. Of these, around 2%, according to Google’s estimation, were hit by the password manager issue. That means around 15 million users have seen their passwords vanish into thin air.

That is highly likely to be a wrong Estimate. The total Chrome number includes Android. In terms of PC it is ~1B outside of China. ( Not even Microsoft has a concrete answer ).

So we are looking at 5M.

Also, the issue wasn't that passwords "vanished into thin air" which implies they are lost forever. Users were unable to access some stored passwords and unable to store new passwords for a time. After the fix, the passwords were accessible and users were able to store new passwords again.

Yes, a significant bug caused by not guarding new functionality with a feature flag, but not as significant as this news article makes it seem.

> but not as significant as this news article makes it seem.

I thought Google has a "development process". /s

People should not be treating any of these password managers as a source of truth. You should have them stored in a text or excel file or any kind of file and backed up on at least 2 storage areas.

Google won't do backups for you, do them yourself. Oh, does Chrome even allow backups?

Doesn't look like there's any option to export your passwords from Chrome, so they don't even allow you to do backups.

chrome://password-manager/settings

Choose "Download file" next to "Export passwords".

I used this flow to exit chrome as my password manager (very happy with vaultwarden).

Knowing how to use debug for MS-DOS makes you a power user.

You can always copy the profile folder?

Bitwarden FTW!

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