3 ms·
No. It is something of a sham. It protects you from one use case: people watching the screen over your shoulder. It does not guard against people watching yo
by Xurinos 15y ago
No. It is something of a sham. It protects you from one use case: people watching the screen over your shoulder. It does not guard against people watching your fingers on the keyboard. It does provide a sense of security. I have no problem shielding the password with a hand over the screen, clicking the box, checking, and unclicking.
- count 15y agoIt also prevents copy/pasting out of that field by most browsers. If someone gets access to your computer because you walked away for a second, goes to your bank page and it autofills, they can access the site, but they can't know your password (which is generally shared between many sites), and so they can only do damage there locally for a (hopefully) brief period of time. If it just displayed in a textbox, game over...
- Xurinos 15y agoSure, copy-paste, but if you monitor the outgoing query via Firebug, you can get the raw password. (This is confirmed with the gmail password input.) I have also in the past used various Windows tools for finding the value of a text box or for toggling the hiddenness of the text. Basically, if someone has access to the machine where your password is stored in any form, all bets are off.