Web User Magazine Misleads Readers About Firefox

Posted by James Marriott on September 6, 2009 under I.T., Media | Be the First to Comment

Web User is a popular publication for people looking for help and advice with all things web related however, over the years I have been increasingly disturbed by the number of articles that seem -to me at least- to contain misleading information.

Today, I came across an article titled “Protect Your Passwords”, a follow on piece about how the number of internet users that use poor passwords or even reuse the same ones over and over for every website thast requires them. I was expecting this article to offer useful information about how we can all benefit from using stonger, unique passwords along with tips on how to manage them all.

Credit where it’s due, the piece did offer some important but basic advice. What it also managed to do though was mislead the readers about the security benefits of using the Firefox browser.

Here’s what web user had to say:
"Set a master password in Firefox
To stop anyone viewing passwords stored in Firefox, you’ll need to set a master password."
It goes on to detail how this can be done.

Now my grievance with this is the hideous implication that users of firefox are at risk form haviing their passwords accessed and that Firefox is the only browser that this is an issue for.

Allow me to correct this:
ALL browsers allow you to view the passwords that you have asked for them to store. However, Firefox is one of the few that make it possible to protect them. As far as I’m aware, it is not possible with Internet Explorer. So far I’ve also failed to see how to do this in Chrome although Opera does make it possible.

It annoyed the hell out of me that a publication like web user allows such misleading information to be published. Instead of praising Firefox for having such a great tool, for allowing people to easily manage strong, unique passwords for such things as ebay, paypal, their bank website etc. they choose instead to try and make out that Firefox is the security sieve of browsers.

Of course I commented but we’ll have to wait to see if they’re willing to publish it. Watch this space.

Read the full article: http://www.webuser.co.uk/help-and-advice/security/387026/protect-your-passwords