If you're accustomed to thinking of security in this all-or-nothing way, the Chrome team's argument makes sense. And the state of the Internet encourages this kind of thinking. In the real world there are plenty of gray areas to security, but online there's always a sufficiently advanced and determined attacker.

It reads and decrypts every password you have on startup.

Safari and Firefox don't try to get the password until there's a form to put it in, but that's not good enough for Chrome.

I only use Chrome for testing apps, never for real use.

Chrome's threat model [1] paints a different analogy. In their view—which I do think is reasonable—the OS is the house and Chrome is simply a room in the house. You don't put locks on all of the interior doors of your house to keep out burglars who might've bypassed your front door, do you?

Their threat model makes sense for many users, and it's flawed for many others. One valid criticism that I do support of Chrome's model of handling passwords is the obscurity of it all. Users as a whole should certainly have a much better idea of how their passwords are being handled.

[1] http://www.chromium.org/Home/chromium-security/security-faq#...

Most single family homes do, in fact, have locks on interior doors. And they're built that way, as that's what most people want.

Nitpick:

Bathroom doors should have easy breakable locks (if any at all) because of danger of carbon monoxide poisoning; locked doors may be the only thing that stand between you and dragging out unconscious family member from danger.

I for one was always taught as a kid to not lock the bathroom when taking a bath.

Not as common today as they once were but there are still plenty of them.

[edit] I found an academic paper that discusses the safety of these heaters - dated 1973. I'd guess that they've gradually disappeared thanks to better heating systems and improved safety regulations. The paper: http://hej.sagepub.com/content/32/4/120.abstract

My hot-water + heating system is gas-fired, but the boiler is in a utility closet vented to the outside.

You are of course right in pointing out that central heating often goes along with central water heating and that heating is often based on fossil fuels such as gas.

Fortunately she was only scared but otherwise ok. Quite the bang, I've had a healthy respect for old Junckers products that have gas lines fed into them since.

Jacques, if you happen to come to Poland again, shoot me an e-mail, I'll buy you a beer :).

That might be quite soon actually. I'll be travelling to Krakow and on another trip I'll be going to Bialestok.

My cell is + 31 6 30 366 241, I won't have email during those days. Send me a text please so I'll be able to reach you when I'm there.

Let me continue this conversation via e-mail then.

I use Firefox, but it seems from the screenshots that Chrome has that minor barrier of clicking before they reveal the password.

Grind your axe elsewhere; it's sad.

Or you could just disable password saving. This is one of the first things I do when I get a new browser or computer. I don't want the browser remembering my passwords.

(Since that is about the same friction as running a soon to be extremely well known piece of javascript, or accessing a site to copy-paste it from.)

I don't understand the big deal here. You shouldn't be storing your passwords at all in a browser.

http://raidersec.blogspot.com.au/2013/06/how-browsers-store-...