The browser sees all the logins we make, with websites, usernames, and passwords in plain text. How do we know it isn’t remembering them and sending them back to the mother ship?
It’s possible someone would inspect the code of open source browsers and make a noise if they found something, but even then most people don’t build from source, so there’s no need for the source to be the same as the downloaded app.
2FA makes it less of a problem, but there are still plenty of juicy pickings for the evil browser.
In: Technology
Browsers are one of those things that gets implicit trust because you have to trust something. It’s the same with your computer’s OS.
At the end of the day, we HAVE to do stuff to function.
To make your fears worse, browsers are openly collecting people’s passwords, and I think Chrome even allows you to sync your passwords across browsers, meaning that yes, passwords get sent back to google.
However, there’s another part of risk analysis that I think you’ll find reassuring.
What would a browser have to gain or lose by exploiting your passwords? Well, if they’re a major browser, or if they’re actually trying to be one, what they have to lose is sooo much higher than what they have to gain. If they got caught, they’d be so deep in lawsuits from both individuals and companies that… well… I’d be surprised if a single dollar survived. It would also be such a PR nightmare that the entire company would just be done.
No business with even a 64/th of a braincell in their management would be willing to send important information through or to that company’s hosted email ever again. used that company’s service for load balancing? NOT ANYMORE! Content hosting? Well that’s not happening. Company blogs? NOPE! All of that goes poof! Contracts canceled, other companies contracted in and all old programs pretty much treated as malware style DONE.
And the PR nightmare? In all honesty, I’d expect a complete purge.
And for what? Money that the banks would immediately move to recover because the activity would look suspicious as all >!censored!<? A major browser couldn’t get away with very much before services and sites react.
Google, Microsoft, and Mozilla are NOT gonna play around with your passwords, not because they can’t, but because the cost of doing so is so dangerously high.
Passwords are no joke, and if people thought browsers were abusing them… I would not want to be involved in cleaning up that mess.
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