Why isn’t my browser remembering my usernames any more?

In this excerpt from
Answercast #72, I look at a browser that is not remembering passwords and
several causes.

Remembering passwords

So, it depends on exactly what specifically you are missing.

If it’s literally the usernames, usually that kind of information is stored
in a cookie by the website that you’re visiting.

Cookies

So, if for some reason:

• You have changed your browser to automatically delete cookies when you
  leave;

• Or if you are deleting cookies on your own;

• Or if you’re running a program regularly (like CCleaner that deletes
  cookies);

That would completely explain that kind of information being lost – because
that’s what those things do. They explicitly erase that information so that
your browser doesn’t have it to remember.

Auto-fill

The other thing that comes to mind is that if you mean “auto-fill,” it could
be your browser auto-filling these fields for you.

It is possible that the browser auto-fill setting has been turned off. The
browser will be remembering these things for you and filling them in when you
return to the same page as a convenience, right?

So what you can do is in your browser’s Options, turn
that on or off. In your case, you’ll want to make sure that setting is still
On.

Remembering passwords

And finally, if it also includes passwords, your browser has the option of
remembering passwords for you as well. Now, I typically don’t recommend it
because browsers can be hacked into somewhat more easily than some of the
alternatives. But if that’s what you’re talking about, that too is a browser
option.

You’ll need to take a look at the options within the browser that you happen
to be using to see if the ability to remember passwords for you is in fact
turned on.

Password software solution

My recommendation by the way for password remembering (which includes
username remembering for these kinds of sites) is not the browser, but a tool
like LastPass or
RoboForm.

I happen to use Last Pass myself and it does a fine job of remembering all
of my different usernames and passwords for me. And it fills them into the
browser for me automatically on all of the machines that I happen to
use.