Password Management

When you surf the web, you sometimes need to provide a login and password to access certain web pages. For example: Intranet pages, web-mail pages, bank-account information pages, etc. Mozilla's browser can remember login and passwords for those pages, so you do not have to type them in every time you access such pages.

Warning

Even if Mozilla stores passwords in a secure manner, some may feel this is a security risk. If you do not feel confident with this feature, or feel other people may access your computer, use it only for accounts that do not give access to sensitive information. You may not want to store passwords for sites such as bank accounts.

Figure 9.6. Enter your Login and Password

Enter your Login and Password

Whenever you access a protected web page, the dialog shown in Figure 9.6 pops up. Enabling the Use Password Manager to remember these values check-box will make Mozilla remember the login/password for that page. Next time you browse to the same page in a different session, the same dialog will pop up, but with both fields already filled for you.

The following figure shows the Passwords sub-section located in the Privacy & Security section of your browser's preferences.

Figure 9.7. Passwords Preferences Dialog

Passwords Preferences Dialog

This is where you should make sure that the Use encryption when storing sensitive data check-box has a check mark in it for increased security.

Clicking on the Manage Stored Passwords button will pop up a dialog where you can remove some or all saved passwords.

Figure 9.8. Manage Stored Passwords Dialog

Manage Stored Passwords Dialog

You also have the opportunity to never store a password for a site. The Passwords Never Saved tab of the dialog lets you remove sites from the list, so passwords can be stored for those sites in the future.

The following figure shows the Master Passwords sub-section located in the Privacy & Security section of your browser's preferences

Figure 9.9. Master Passwords Preferences Dialog

Master Passwords Preferences Dialog

You can click on the Reset Password button to clear all passwords, form data and certificates stored, or on the Change Password button to change the master password.

The master password is the one used to encrypt all sensitive information Mozilla stores on disk. This password should be of high quality (the change-password dialog has a quality meter) if you want a high level of security.