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Built-in Account Manager coming to Firefox, heralds a new age of security and convenience
Introducing: the Account Manager add-on for Firefox.
Mozilla Labs posed a simple question: why should you have to input passwords on every site you visit? Your browser is you. You shouldn't need to identify yourself every time! With Account Manager, website developers can let Firefox handle your sign-ins. Account Manager works behind the scenes so that you don't have to -- in theory you don't even know your name or password for a site: Firefox manages it for you. Changing your identity is a matter of selecting another name from a drop-down box in Firefox -- Account Manager does the rest.
It's an exciting concept and, given the surge of tailored-to-the-user functionality that we're seeing in Web browsers (the Chrome new tab page!), I think this is just the tip of the iceberg. Support of other authorization schemes like OpenID and HTTP Auth is next... exciting!
The experimental add-on is available for download on Mozilla's Account Manager site if you'd like to try it out.
Comments
7
Subscribe to commentsGardiner WestboundApr 28th 2010 10:21AM
The RoboForm add-on does this, and more.
Free at http://www.roboform.com/
216Apr 28th 2010 10:36AM
Hmm I hope Chrome gets a similar feature and most importantly, I hope it syncs across other browsers
Barry MizesApr 28th 2010 1:21PM
Lastpass has been doing this and much more for quite a while.
alex danteApr 29th 2010 1:44AM
Awesome. Now rather than having to hack every individual site to get my details, there's a single point of failure!
It's really true that security and convenience are mutually exclusive ideals.
halophoenixApr 30th 2010 4:07PM
"Heralds a new era?" Hyperbole much?
Sheesh - there are a dozen add-ons that do this already, and even back when Firefox was still Phoenix and before then when it was just Mozilla there was profile management. Honestly.
GrantMay 3rd 2010 1:52PM
Honest question...did all those services in the past create jumbled
random passwords for you so you don't even know them?
I'm not sure I would trust this thing. One glitch or breakdown from
either your computer or Firefox and all your online accounts are done
with, right? Well, maybe that's exaggerating. Maybe you could go to
each and every site and use the "recover password" option...unless
that uses your email account - you don't even know the password to
that (unless you can recover it, too).
What happens if I'm on a friend's laptop and I wanna check my
Facebook? I don't know the password - my browser does. So would I be
royally screwed if I wanted to use a different computer some time.
What if I get a new computer (or if my old one crashes or gets
stolen)? This whole thing seems like a mess waiting to happen (mostly because I don't even know my own passwords).
adam.planteMay 25th 2010 3:13PM
you use log me in to connect to your computer or put portable firefox on a thumb drive. i am sure if you wanted you could export them to some sort of text document or back them up to an xml file.