If you want to many people, someone probably tricked you into using a password manager and you still did not heed the advice. Now Chrome and Edge come to the rescue with enhanced password management built right into the browsers.
Microsoft on Thursday announced a new password generator for the newly released Edge 88. People can use the generator when they sign up for a new account or when they change an existing password. The generator provides a drop-down menu in the password field. By clicking on the candidate, select it as a password and save it to a password manager built into the browser. People can then move the password to their other devices with the Edge password sync feature.
As I have explained for years, the same things that make passwords memorable and easy to use are the same things that make it easy for others to guess. Password generators are one of the safest sources of strong passwords. Instead of inventing a password that is truly unique and hard to guess, users can have a generator run instead.
“Microsoft Edge provides a built-in strong password generator that you can use when signing in to a new account or changing an existing password,” wrote members of Microsoft’s Edge team. “Just look at the password drop-down list suggested by the browser in the password field, and if selected, it will be automatically saved in the browser and synced on different devices for easy future use.”
Edge 88 also implements a feature called the Password Monitor. As the name suggests, it monitors the stored passwords to make sure none of them are included in lists compiled from website compromises or phishing attacks. If enabled, the password monitor will alert users when a password matches the lists published online.
Checking passwords is a difficult task. The browser must be able to control a password in a large, ever-changing list without sending sensitive information to Microsoft or information that could be sniffed out by someone monitoring the connection between the user and Microsoft. In an accompanying post also published Thursday, Microsoft explained exactly how this is done.
Not to be outdone, members of the Google Chrome team unveiled their own password protection this week. The most important among them is a complete password manager built into the browser.
“Chrome may already ask you to update your saved passwords when signing in to sites,” Chrome team members wrote. ‘However, you can easily update multiple usernames and passwords in one convenient place. Therefore, from Chrome 88, you can manage all your passwords even faster and easier in Chrome settings on desktop and iOS (Chrome’s Android app will soon get this feature as well). “
Chrome 88 also makes it easier to verify that saved passwords have ended up in password spills. While password control came to Chrome last year, you can now access the feature with a security keystroke.
Many people are more comfortable using a dedicated password manager because they offer more features than those baked into their browser. For example, most dedicated drivers make it easy to use dice words safely. As the line between browsers and password managers begins to blur, it’s probably only a matter of time until browsers offer more advanced management features.
This story originally appeared on Ars Technica.
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