Have you forgotten your password for some website or some online service? If you use Mozilla Firefox browser and you had used the “Remember password” feature of Firefox for that particular password while browsing that website or using that online service, there is a good chance that you can easily recover your lost or forgotten password. No software is required. Just a few simple steps and you’ll get your password.
Firefox allows you to save your user names and passwords for the sites visited by you so that you won’t have to input the user name and password again and again for signing in to such sites. However, such saved information, including the saved passwords, is not secure and such information is accessible also to any other person using Firefox on your computer. In fact, Firefox allows you to actually read these saved user names and / or passwords for such sites in simple plain text! Of course, if you use the “Master Password” feature of Firefox, then other persons may not be able to read your passwords in Firefox since in that they would be required to enter your Master Password which is encrypted and will not be known to them. But, you’ll still be able to see your own saved online passwords even if you’re using Master Password in Firefox; of course, in this situation, you’ll have to first enter your Master Password. To know more about Master Password, read my article How to keep your passwords secret in Firefox. Since saving your passwords through a Master Password is not the default method in Firefox, most people use the simple method of storing passwords in Firefox for the sites visited by them (i.e., they don’t use Master Password). This means that their passwords are not secure and can be read in plain text even by others. Using a Master Password in Firefox can make these passwords secure from the prying eyes of other people; and at the same time if you’ve to recover your own passwords you can still view your saved online passwords by first entering your Master Password.
Anyway, for the purposes of this article, since you’ve forgotten your online password and you had saved this password in Firefox, let me explain how you can easily recover this password from Firefox. For this purpose, proceed as under:
(1) Start Firefox and then from the Tools menu, click on Options menu item.
(2) The Options dialog box will appear on the screen. Click on the Security tab in this dialog box. It will appear as under:
(3) Click on the Saved Passwords button.
If you’ve used a Master Password to protect your saved passwords in Firefox, then it will ask you to enter the Master Password first, as shown in figure below; so, enter your Master Password and then click OK. However, if you’re not using Master Password to protect your saved passwords, then Firefox will simply show the next window.
In either case, you proceed to the next step.
(4) Now, If you’ve entered your Master Password correctly if you’re using one, or if you don’t use any Master Password at all, you’ll see the following Saved Passwords dialog box appearing on the screen:
(5) In this dialog box, click on the Show Passwords button.
Now again, if you’re using the Master Password, you’ll be asked to enter it. On the other hand, if you’re not using the Master Password, then you’ll be asked to simply confirm whether you wish to show your passwords. Confirm it by clicking on Yes button.
(6) You’ll now see all your saved online passwords along with user names and sites for which such passwords have been saved. These passwords are in simple plain text and are not encrypted. Look at the following dialog box that shows the passwords saved on my computer by Firefox browser:
Of course, I’ve hidden the site names, user names and passwords in the above image for the reasons that need no explanation.
(6) So, you’ve got all your passwords that you had stored in Firefox. And, they would be including your forgotten password also!
That’s it! Thus, recovering forgotten online passwords from Firefox is quite easy if you had saved them in Firefox.
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this is a nice idea.. good post
Dose it work on Google Chrome too? If not, how can you do it on Chrome?
The information is Good, and it worked fine, but I haven’t use Firefox for a while, so most of the passwords are out of date.