---
title: "Why Google Chrome and FireFox are a big security risk for anyone using them"
url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2009/10/5/why-google-chrome-and-firefox-are-a-big-security-risk-for-an.md"
canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2009/10/5/why-google-chrome-and-firefox-are-a-big-security-risk-for-an.html"
published: "2009-10-05T15:18:39"
updated: "2009-10-05T15:18:39"
tags: [".NET"]
author: "Roy Osherove"
description: "I’ve stopped using Internet Explorer – Too damn slow, memory hogging beast. I’ve stopped using FireFox, for the same reasons, funnily enough (until I found out about the security flaw). I’m now using Safari – it’s…"
usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)."
license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
---

# Why Google Chrome and FireFox are a big security risk for anyone using them

By Roy Osherove October 5, 2009 In [.NET](https://osherove.com/blog/category/net)

**Historical article** · Originally published October 5, 2009; technical details may be outdated.

I’ve stopped using Internet Explorer – Too damn slow, memory hogging beast.

I’ve stopped using FireFox, for the same reasons, funnily enough (until I found out about the security flaw).

I’m now using Safari – it’s blazing fast, reliable and does not have that aweful security risk that Chrome does.

**What is it?**

**Google Chrome will reveal your saved passwords to anyone** who wants them, with no possibility of securing them with a master password. The image below shows what happens when I use Chrome to save my password for gmail, I can then just go an open chrome options, click “Show Saved passwords” and select a line there, and click “Show password” (in the image that button is titled “Hide password” after clicking it.

![image](https://osherove.com/img/wb/8ad223bc_weblogs.asp.net_blogs_rosherove_image_thumb_09FEA948.png)

With Firefox, the **default** behavior is to allow anyone to see your passwords as well, but you can **actively** choose to use a master password in firefox to make this less accessible. the **default** is that it’s open for anyone to see. With Chrome, there isn’t even a “master password” option.

Until they fix this, I am **not** going to use Chrome, I don’t care how fast it is. Safari is fast and doesn’t show my passwords.

K THX BY

## More in .NET

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---

## About the author

**Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery.

### Sites

- [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership.
- [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts.
- [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin.
- [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model.
- [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps.
- [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes).

### Social

- X: https://x.com/royosherove
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/osherove/

### Contact

- Contact form: https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7

### License

Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/