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How Do I Get My Login ID and Password to Stop Showing on Sites that I Log Into?

Question:

How do I eliminate my email/password from automatically showing up on our
computer for Facebook? I have searched their help answers. Could it have
something to do with our Firefox settings?

Yep. It’s all about Firefox.

Actually, this applies to not only Firefox, but most other browsers as well,
and not just to Facebook, but many other sites, too.

You’ve configured your browser to be helpful. Smile

If that’s not the kind of help that you want, we can change that.

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Remembering Passwords

What you’re seeing is an option in most browsers that remembers logins and
password for you. When you visit the site for which that login and password
apply, the browser automatically fills it in for you:

Facebook browser auto-login

It can be somewhat handy as one way to keep and manage a lot of passwords to
many different sites.

As we’ll see below, it can also be a security risk.

Controlling Firefox’s memory

Click the Firefox menu, then click Options, and again click
Options:

Firefox options menu item

In the resulting dialog, click the Security tab:

Firefox 'remember passwords' option

Assuming that you want Firefox to stop remembering all password, just uncheck
the Remember passwords for sites option.

If you want Firefox to remember some but not all, it supports exceptions as you can see – so leave this checked for now.

Cleaning Firefox’s memory

Next, we need to tell Firefox to forget what it’s remembered so far.

Click the Saved Passwords … button:

Firefox saved passwords

Here, you can see the list of web sites for which Firefox has saved
passwords.

You can either:

  • Click Remove All to clear the entire list and have Firefox
    forget everything.
  • Click an individual entry in the list and click Remove
    to remove only that entry.

If you elect to go the later route, note that Facebook has two entries here. Http and https URLs are considered two separate sites and may each have a copy of your login ID and password. If you want to erase Facebook from this list, you’ll want to remove both of them.

Managing exceptions to Firefox’s memory

As I alluded above, you can let Firefox remember some, but not all, of your
passwords for you. You do that by leaving Remember passwords for sites checked and then logging in to one of your password-protected sites that is not already in Firefox’s memory. After you login successfully, Firefox will ask:

Firefox asking to remember a password

You can select:

  • Remember Password to have Firefox remember your login ID
    and password for you.
  • Never Remember Password for This Site places this site in
    the Exceptions list. Firefox will no longer try to save the login ID and
    password for this site. (Remember that you may need to do this again if you
    login using both http and https because Firefox sees those as different.)
  • Not Now will cause Firefox not to remember the password
    this time, but it will ask you again the next time that you login to this site.

The security issue in Firefox’s memory

Have a look at that saved passwords dialog again:

Firefox Saved Passwords dialog, highlighting the Show Passwords button

Click Show Passwords and click Yes when it asks if
you’re sure.

Firefox showing passwords

There they are. Your passwords for anyone to see.

There are several approaches for mitigating this vulnerability. If you do
nothing else, go back to the Security Options dialog and select the checkbox to
Use a master password. Do that so that a master password would be required to access any of your remembered passwords.

Is it
safe to let my browser remember passwords?
has more thoughts on letting
your browser remember passwords and I encourage you to read it.

Do this

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10 comments on “How Do I Get My Login ID and Password to Stop Showing on Sites that I Log Into?”

  1. If you also want to stop it from showing suggestions when you type in text boxes, go to the privacy tab, then from the drop down menu select Use custom settings for history, then a set of checkboxes will show up including one that says Remember search and form history, which is the one you’ll want to uncheck.

    By the way, you can also click directly on Options, so you don’t have to expand the menu and click Options in there (perhaps a bit confusing).

    Reply
  2. Actually, I WANT my browser ( SR Iron), not only to log me in to my sites ( fora mainly), but do it 100% AUTOMATICALLY–i.e no display and NO confirmation dialog–some sites already do this, others ( highly annoyingly !) refuse–example Mediafire–had an account there for 3 years + BUT, it NEVER remembers me ! –Incidentally I am not bothered about so-called “security risks ! “

    Reply
  3. Quote:

                           “Incidentally I am not bothered about so-called ‘security risks!’ “

    An excellent barometer of intelligence if ever I saw one.

    Reply
  4. Ebay remembers my User ID (not my password). I use Chrome and have made sure Chrome doesn’t remember passwords but I can’t see how to stop it remembering user IDs. Is this a cookie issue?

    I believe the user ID is managed by the “AutoFill” options in Chrome.

    Leo
    06-Dec-2011
    Reply
  5. @ Glenn P — I hate to go off topic, but.. assuming your comment is some sort of sarcasm, I will elucidate;- I use a 12 Gig RAM drive for all my browsing, as soon as I have finished, naturally I destroy the drive, and all ( if any DO get through?) “risks” generally cease to exist when the RAM drive dies. ( anyway I still feel these “risks” get to be promoted up to paranoidal proportions !).

    Reply
  6. Passwords stored in a browser can be hacked. Better to use a password manager. LastPass will auto-fill your username & password and is as secure as you can possibly be. And it’s free. Roboform is another good option that you’d pay for.

    Reply
  7. I want to have to type in my e mail address & password everytime I login. Right now my e mail address comes up automatically. I have Windows Vista. I saw your answer for Fire fox but I don’t have that.
    thanks

    Reply
  8. @Pam
    You mention that you don’t use Firefox, but don’t mention which browser you use. I’m guessing it must be Internet Explorer. Disabling autocomplete is very much the same on IE as on Firefox.

    Click the > tool gear (top right). Select > Internet Options. Choose the > Content tab. Click > Settings button in Autocomplete. Adjust your settings there and close out of the windows.

    Reply
  9. @Poomanie
    In Google Chrome click on the settings icon which is a button with 3 horizontal bars in the upper right hand corner of the browser, then scroll down and click “Advanced settings”. Now scroll down to “Passwords and Forms” and click on the check box by “Offer to save passwords I enter on the web.” to remove the check mark.

    Reply

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