I’m just scared that they’re saved with reversible encryption on the disk, then malware could steal them
I would totally trust it, but on a cyber security stand point I don’t trust anything with my credit card. The only place where the numbers are stored are on the physical card itself
Temporary card numbers are awesome. Some CC providers give you one, otherwise you can use a service like privacy.com. You can also pay for things in crypto and keep only a limited amount of crypto in your browser-based wallet or do multi-sig so you have to approve transactions from two different devices. This can help minimize loss from an attack.
No. If I want my CC number I just……look at my CC
reversible encryption
All encryption is reversible, otherwise it wouldn’t be encryption, it would be a hash. If you don’t use a password, it’s easy to reverse the encryption. If you do use a password, the maximum security with a brute force attack is 112 bits, which is pretty weak.
I recommend using a different password management service (which also handles credit card info), any password manager will be fine. I personally use Bitwarden, which uses 256 bits of encryption. That’s pretty standard across password managers, so you’re better of focusing on making a secure password.
That said, if you’re only worried about credit card info and not storing passwords in Firefox, you’re probably fine. Credit cards have a ton of protection, so if someone steals your card info, call your bank to dispute the fraudulent transactions and get a new card, it doesn’t cost anything and has little hassle. Debit cards are another story, so I recommend just not using debit cards at all online.
Prepaid debit cards for the win. You need to buy something online? Open your banking app, transfer the amount to the card, pay. After that the card is empty and cannot be used to pay flr anything until you need it again.
banking app
Cringe
You’re cringe
What do you use then?
A dedicated VM, a hardened/single-site/incognito browser, and website.
So something that’s even worse, cool.
An app can use a lot more factors than this “hardened” browser.
Quit your trolling.
What? Theres only 2 secure factors, and I use two when I log in with my browser.
Most people have phones with biometric or shitty passwords. Its not a safe device for sensitive things like banks.
You still lose the money, though. But I get your point for someone who’s staunchly anti credit card
Lose the money? You mean by having a prepaid or by using it to buy stuff?
If it gets stolen (i.e. scam, or breached website), you can’t charge back like with a credit card. That money is still gone, but you do limit your losses compared to using your main debit card.
Oh yeah that is true. But at least if just your card details are stolen the card is unusable when empty. As I said it’s best to just keep it empty until you actually buy something and you just put on the exact amount you need.
Unrelated, I actually don’t know if prepaid Visa cards have the same protections as real credit cards. Something to look into, perhaps.
What would those be? I don’t have a xredit card so I have no idea what kind of protections they have? I know the prepaid does not work if the amount on the card is lower than the transaction you are trying to do.
That sounds like way more effort than a credit card, especially here in the US where transfers between banks take 2-3 days.
If you really want to avoid credit, you can lock your debit card and unlock it when you make a purchase. That’s still annoying, but effective. But if you’re responsible, there’s really no reason to avoid credit, and you get rewards on top.
especially here in the US where transfers between banks take 2-3 days.
*Laughs in SEPA Instant Transfer*
Anyhow, locking and unlocking is an option. Using “3D Secure” systems - which require a secondary approval via an app or website - works significantly better, and chargebacks are one tap in a banking app (modern apps, so US might again be fucked here).
Chargebacks here are a little more complex, and usually not what you want to do since it costs vendors money (read: they may refuse to serve you in the future). Instead, you want to report the transaction as fraud (which is different from a chargeback), and the bank will investigate and work with vendors.
So usually a quick call (mine took 5 min) and the transactions are put on hold pending the investigation (mine resolved in 2-3 days). A new card is sent immediately, and if you go to a branch, it can be printed immediately.
Maybe not as smooth as the EU, but still decent. I’ve only had to do that once, each other time the fraud was caught by automated systems before I noticed.
I leave a number wrong. The security code, date, whatever. I can remember one number and correct the autofill while making an attempt to keep things a little more secure and still convenient.
I keep those kind of numbers in Keepassxc and cut and paste them when I need them. It’s not that I don’t trust FF I just think having one storage place is better than having two and it’s just not necessary for FF to have them. A few extra seconds of copy pasting inconvenience is a price I’m happy to pay. For extra security I never cut and paste the CVC, that’s always manual entry from memory.
I actually memorised my credit card number including the expiration date and security code. it’s very convenient and I highly recommend it.
The number being somewhere on your computer isn’t something I’d worry about. The real risk is from a liberal autocomplete that might throw it into website forms where you don’t want it to be, including hidden ones. Maybe there are protections in place since I last let Firefox save anything like this, but it used to try pasting address and CC info whenever it could.
No. I don’t save cc’s on any browser.
Dont save anything* in a browser. Permanent private mode
I do trust it well enough, but I don’t use it.
For starters, I don’t want it to be too easy to spend money. If I want something, I should want it enough to pull my card out and type the number again.
Second, the auto-fill often doesn’t work perfectly, so you need the card anyway.
Third, there’s the slim chance it could be hacked. So why even take that chance when the only benefit is convenience
Please don’t save stuff in your browser. It’s very easy to rip those passwords and logins. If you must, keep it in a proper password manager like bitwarden or keepass.
How about when using a primary password?
Doesn’t matter, can be bypassed on both firefox and chrome.
Just checked it, it doesn’t seem to be the case
When you save website passwords, the Primary Password feature encrypts them before storing them on your computer
Chrome passwords are free for the taking though
Yup, I only store testing creds for work use. My actual credentials are in a proper password manager.
Historically, I’ve seen more “proper” password managers with breaches than browser storage.
Well yeah, if you breach a password manager, you get tons of credentials. If you breach a person’s computer, you get one set of credentials. And most of those breaches are low impact, such as Okta:
For 99.6% of customers, hackers accessed only full names and email addresses, according to Okta, though in some cases they may also have accessed phone numbers, usernames and details of some employee roles.
Here’s an example of a browser attack (not necessarily password management, but related):
These scams have been going on for months, and one YouTuber claims they work through fake sponsors reaching out to creators. The YouTubers are then convinced to download a file related to the sponsorship, which is just malware designed to steal cookies, remotely control PCs, and ultimately hijack YouTube accounts.
Basically, any script that can run on your machine can compromise stored passwords and credit cards if there’s no master password set (typically the default behavior). If there is a master password, it could be brute forced (I’m guessing most attackers don’t bother). It’s just a lot harder to detect this kind of breach since it happens on end-user machines instead of an audited web service. I’m guessing a lot of people get hacked this way, but it doesn’t make the news because individuals don’t dig into the breach to find the cause.
My understanding is that password managers are still way more secure than using your browser’s built-in PW management, and you can take it a step further and self-host (e.g. Bitwarden offers this) to require attackers to actually target you.
The thing with built in browser password manager like in chrome or firefox is even if it’s password peotected, you can still get those very easily.
Sure, but it requires a more sophisticated attack, so risks are a bit lower. There are tons of easier targets, so an attacker will probably just go after them instead.
But when it comes to a proper password manager, there are a ton of similarly protected accounts, so an attacker will either go for all the data or not bother. You’re more likely to get corporate accounts and whatnot than by hacking a built-in browser PW manager, which is a lot more lucrative than someone’s credit card info.
But the core point I’m trying to make is that we won’t know how many people get hacked with built-in browser password managers because nobody is monitoring them. We do know about proper password manager breaches because someone is watching for them. In other words, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, so the number of publicly reported breaches won’t tell you which is safer, it just tells you which are high profile.
I guess I feel somewhat safer as relatively anonymous target of spearphishing as I have been for 20 years without incident, instead of as part of a much more valuable collective target, even though that data is probably better protected.
I’m guessing you practice relatively secure computing, meaning you don’t download suspicious stuff, keep your system updated, etc. But that’s not true security, you could always run into a browser vulnerability on a random website.
Also, there’s no guarantee that you haven’t been hacked, all we know is that you haven’t noticed your private information being used. Usually what happens is attackers get a bunch of data then sell it on the black market. Buyers of that data will probably only use a subset of that data, so your data could be sold, just not used. You can check if your passwords have been leaked by examining data sets of leaked latest ([e.g. Have I Been Owned; I recommend not actually sending important info here).
There are two routes to go here:
- Use proper security - high quality password manager, self-host your data (Bitwarden allows this)
- Reduce the impact of a breach (don’t use debit cards online, monitor credit card statements, etc)
The second is probably sufficient for most people though.
One important thing to note is that the main reason to go with a password manager is to have really secure passwords that are unique for each site. That way if one service gets breached, attackers can’t just use the same credentials on other sites. Browser password managers don’t do that, so you’re opening yourself up to that if you’re not careful in constructing good, unique passwords. I have >100 accounts, each with their own password, and that just wouldn’t be feasible without a password manager.
Your saved passwords are reversible too, just don’t do it. If you really want to, put a password on it, but then why would you even save it at all? The convenience is lost at that point. And if you save it without a password, to decrypt the cc a decryption key has to be saved somewhere, and if it’s not on your pc, it’s saved on a server you don’t own.
deleted by creator
More likely to be stolen in person at your local coffee shop
If it’s a credit card then you should have pretty decent protection against fraud from the credit card company. I’ve had my card details stolen a few times (though never directly from my browser) and each time the credit card company has identified the fraud and reached out to me within minutes.
Now if it’s a debit card, you should NEVER put those numbers into a computer. I only ever use my debit card to access the ATM, and even that is rare.
I don’t use debit cards anywhere for this exact reason. Don’t even have one. When I have in the past, I’ve had the card linked to a seperate bank account with a small balance and no overdraft protection to limit damage. What I’d found though is that even when you tell the bank not to enable overdraft protection, they conveniently forget that and it stays possible to overdraft your account and get hit with fees,
I do the same strategy for crypto wallets, there’s only a small amount in my browser wallet so that if somebody gets it, they can’t steal much. From there you can have varying degrees of storage security for larger amounts: multi-sig so you have to sign transactions using multiple devices, hardware wallets, and cold storage.
I see all these articles about people getting thousands of dollars stolen from their crypto wallet and I’m like, you put $3,000 on the same computer you play Zombie Run 4 on? Knowing there was no fraud protection? And that a hardware wallet costs $100? Or that multi-sig is free? If you are storing that much in crypto, you need to either educate yourself on safe storage or use a custodian you can trust (exchange, multi-sig with family member, etc) who can.
That’s only true for debit cards that aren’t backed by master card or visa. When you use your debit card that is online, it’s run as a credit card and has the same fraud protections.
Sounds like a very US specific answer. In EU I only have a debit card and sometimes I have a hard time using it even myself because I need to pass 2fa and sometimes even that isn’t enough if I’m on a new browser
Credit cards work the same everywhere*, it’s not US-specific. My debit card actually only has my bank account number on it (but I think that actually is a Germany-only thing with our Girocards), so paying for stuff online is just a normal bank transfer, where yeah you do have to pass the bank’s 2FA (unless it’s via SEPA direct debit).
* mostly, my card requires me to confirm some charges in a special phone app, I don’t think that’s a thing everywhere since it’s also fairly recent
This is on account of the concept of SCA (Strong Customer Authentication) from PSD2 (Payment Services Directive), an EU-regulation.
