May soon disable individual compromised password warnings in Chrome

Chrome users who use the web browser to save passwords receive warnings if saved passwords are found in leaks. Users can use the information to change the account password or delete the entire account to prevent account takeover.

Soon, Chrome users will be able to silence these warnings for individual passwords. While it’s already possible to disable the warning for all passwords by disabling the feature, some Chrome users may want to disable it for individual passwords.

Tip: To completely disable password checking, visit chrome://settings/security and disable “warn you if passwords are exposed in a data breach”.

Default passwords for local services are a good example. If you have saved the default username and password combination for a local service or device, Chrome may detect it as broken. While that may be the case, it may not pose a threat due to the local nature of the service.

Google is testing a new feature that gives users control over individual password leak warnings. Called “Mute and unmute compromised passwords in bulk leak check”, it needs to be enabled currently as it is an experimental feature at the time.

1. Load chrome://flags/#mute-compromised-passwords in the Google Chrome address bar.
2. Set the mute and unmute compromised passwords in mass leak check flag to enabled.
3. Restart the Google Chrome browser.

Once rebooted, do the following to use the new functionality:

1. Select Menu > Settings > Autofill > Passwords, or load chrome://settings/passwords directly.
2. Select the Check passwords option to run a check for compromised and weak passwords.

Google lists compromised and weak passwords found during the scan in the Compromised Password and Weak Passwords sections.

The two listings separate passwords found in data breaches (compromised) and passwords that are considered weak. Weak passwords have not been compromised, but it is usually trivial to gain account access due to the weak nature of the password.

To silence a compromised password, select the “change password” button next to the password in question and enable the “dismiss warning” context menu option. Similarly, if you want to restore a warning, repeat the process but select “restore warning” this time for the selected password.

closing words

Chrome users can use the new functionality to suppress warnings displayed by Chrome if compromised or weak passwords are found; this is useful in some cases to block warning messages from appearing in Chrome.

The feature is experimental at the moment and there’s a chance it won’t make it to the stable version of Chrome.

Now you: do you save passwords in your browser? (via Technologies)

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