Where passwords are stored in popular browsers

A large number of different online services, affiliate programs and payment systems require password authentication. Setting the same password for all services is highly discouraged. And this is understandable. It remains to decide what to do if you have these passwords, say, from 5 to infinity. After all, remembering all this is simply unrealistic or requires considerable effort and super memory. Fortunately, you can not use the services of third-party software (although there are many programs for storing passwords ) - even in the regular Internet Explorer browser there are similar mechanisms. Let's take a closer look at it to answer the question of where the passwords are stored in this still popular browser, and most importantly, in what form. Snobs from IT are indignant - "this is the last century, to use this sieve, you must also install a quality third-party browser!" But it should be noted, firstly, that in Windows you can configure a sufficiently high level of security, using a good antivirus and an account with limited rights. And secondly, this is the easiest way to store, excluding the installation of additional software. The simpler the system, the more reliable it is.

Settings for the password keeper can be found on the "Contents" tab (the "AutoComplete" button) of the " Control Panel Browser Properties" icon. You can store there passwords to sites (including those stored by the method of autocomplete) and information for autocomplete (logins). Do not forget to tick the "Request to save the password." The password can be conveniently set by typing it in Notepad and using the "cut" operation to transfer it to the corresponding field of the open site. Internet Explorer will ask you whether you want to save the password, you need to answer positively. Then the next time you go to the authorization page and click the left mouse button, the system prompts you to choose a login, and the password field will be filled in by yourself. Despite the popular misconceptions about the unreliability of storing passwords in Internet Explorer, they are encrypted unlike Google Chrome. Of course, there are already numerous special utilities for decoding them. The storage location is the Cookies directory in the user folder under which you saved the password directly in Documents & Settings. This is the most simple and reliable method of storage, at least, better, because some services offer the storage of passwords on the Internet, which is very unreliable. And what if you are comfortable with using another browser or do you want to improve convenience? To do this, Opera and Firefox also have an autocomplete mechanism.

Let's see how you can set up saving passwords in opera. Just open the menu, similar to Windows start and choose "General settings" there. We are looking for a noticeable tab "Forms" and put a checkbox "Enable password management." As a result of these manipulations, the next time you set passwords, a special panel will appear at the top, prompting you to save the entered password in the Opera database. The answer to the question where the passwords are stored is simple, you can find all the opera passwords in the wand.dat file located in the Application Data folder (located in the user profile) / IOpera / Opera. In Windows 7 / Vista in the directory Appdata \ Roaming \ Opera \ Opera.

There is a password manager in Mozilla FIREFOS. Saving passwords in this browser is by default, their file is in the profile, so the answer to the question of where the passwords are stored for this browser is simple. A copy of the profile is desirable to be saved together with the backup of the system.

It should be noted that all the above ways of storing classified information are relatively inconvenient. Still, you have to come up with a password every time, and this is fraught with the fact that attackers can easily pick it up using the dictionary search method. So if you have to keep a lot of personal data by the nature of your professional activity, the Roboform Lite utility, which is suitable for all common browsers and platforms (including Linux and Mac), will help to prevent intruders from understanding where the passwords are stored, and if they succeed Learn, then they will not be able to use them (since they are encrypted).