Curious what's under those asterisks for your password when
viewing the log-in screen for a Web service? Now you can find out in just a few
steps.
Having your browser store
password data for sites can be a huge time-saver and convenience. Naturally,
there are security issues to consider-- what if someone else uses your
computer? Less severe but more irritating, what if you forget your password and
need to log in on another machine? Unless you use the same password for several
services, you could be left in a bad situation.
Instead
of answering security questions to reset your password to something else you
might forget, try these steps to figure out what it is.
step 1: Open the log-in page for the service you're
interested in.
Step 2: Right click on the password field and select
Inspect Element from the menu that appears.
Step 3: In the window that appears (Firefox users see optional step below), double click on
the part of the text that says type="password" and change the quoted
value to "text" and hit Enter.
For Firefox: the text
editor is initially hidden in the element viewer. To view it, click on the
Markup Panel icon in the bottom-left of the window
As soon as you hit the
Enter button the field text will change from dots to the actual password text.
Now you'll never have to reset an old password because of memory issues again!
Don't worry if you feel
these changes compromise your security -- once you navigate away from the page
your changes will be reverted. However, it might give you pause when deciding
to save future passwords now that you know how easily someone else could find
it.
