Tip of the day: Managing saved passwords and form data for Web sites

The AutoComplete feature in Internet Explorer allows you to save form data and user name/password combinations associated with Web pages. Firefox offers a similar feature with some important usability improvements. Today’s tip tells you how to work with this feature in IE and Firefox.

As you begin entering data in a field on a Web form, your browser consults its list of previous entries for that form and proposes possible matches, thereby reducing the amount of typing you have to do. Likewise, when your browser (IE or Firefox) detects matching user name and password fields on a Web page, it saves the data as a matched pair. In the case of IE, each chunk of data gets its own 15-digit encrypted pointer, saved as a DWORD value in the registry (in the HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Intellliforms\SPW). The Protected Storage service uses this index to query the encrypted data store and return the saved data when a program asks for it. Firefox saves this data in encrypted format in Signons.txt, which is stored in your Firefox profile folder. The encrypted data is unlocked using a file called Key3.db.

When it comes to entering passwords, AutoComplete (the IE name for this feature) and Saved Form Information / Saved Passwords (Firefox terminology) can be both a help and a hazard. If you’re prone to forgetting your passwords, saving this data can save you time and frustration. On the other hand, having the saved information readily available can also make it easier for someone else to log onto one of your private accounts.

If you’d rather do without AutoComplete for user names and passwords, follow these steps in Internet Explorer:

1. Choose Tools, Internet Options.
2. Click the Content tab.
3. Click AutoComplete. The AutoComplete Settings dialog box appears.

   

4. Clear the User names and passwords on forms option.
5. To erase Internet Explorer’s memory of user names and passwords that you’ve already recorded, click Clear Passwords.

If you like using AutoComplete for user names and passwords but want to forgo it for particularly sensitive accounts, click Clear Passwords (to get back to an initial state, before Internet Explorer began remembering any of your passwords), and then make sure that Prompt me to save passwords is selected. As you use your various accounts, you will be prompted each time you enter a password that Internet Explorer can (optionally) remember. Let it record passwords for the accounts you’re not concerned about and decline its offer to remember the ones that are more critical.

Firefox users have access to a similar set of features that are much more complete. To access these settings in Firefox, choose Tools, Options, and then click the Privacy icon in the sidebar. To enable or disable this setting for forms, expand the Saved Form Information option and select or clear Save information I enter in web page forms and the Search Bar.

To enable or disable this setting for user names and passwords, expand the Saved Passwords option and select or clear Remember Passwords.

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The Firefox version of this feature has three valuable options that IE doesn’t offer: Click Set Master Password to lock up your password list so that someone sitting at your computer can’t engage in some impromptu identity theft. Click View Saved Passwords to open the Password Manager dialog box, where you can view and edit a list of sites with their saved logon credentials. Click the Passwords Never Saved tab to specify particularly sensitive sites where you want to be certain you can only log on by typing a password. (For those sites, be sure you’ve selected a strong password!)