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When someone accidentally types his or her password in one of the following three locations and presses enter, what should they do?

  1. username text box
  2. address bar
  3. Google search

What do you suggest, for example, a checklist, or instruction note?

And what might happen to him?

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2  
Change your password. I suggest changing it to www.google.com so you don't have this problem again. – Mike Samuel Dec 10 '12 at 18:59
many of users before loading the page, type their usernames or passwords. after loading pages cursor move to username textbox and their password visible to others. always saved this password in that text box. and increases security Risks for them. and they forget to clean cache and anything else related to place that passwords saved! – saber tabatabaee yazdi Dec 12 '12 at 4:24

2 Answers

up vote 13 down vote accepted

If you accidentally disclose your password -- either through typing it into the address bar, or in any other way -- it's best to change it.

There's no need for any complicated checklist. Simply change that password, everywhere that you used that particular password. This will protect you.

Is it absolutely necessary to change your password if you typed it into the address bar? Perhaps not -- in practice, the risk is probably modest. Then again, why take a chance? If you type it into the address bar, it may be disclosed in cleartext over the network. For instance, if you are currently connected using open Wifi, anyone within range of the network who is eavesdropping could capture your password. Also, your password could potentially be captured in various logs. So, at that point, rather than taking a gamble, the safest thing to do is to immediately change your password. If you do that, you'll probably be fine.

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structure of Password was caught? – saber tabatabaee yazdi Dec 10 '12 at 5:37
8  
@sabertabatabaeeyazdi, sorry, I couldn't make sense of that comment; perhaps you would like to try again? It might help to use complete sentences. – D.W. Dec 10 '12 at 5:39
10  
your passwords should not have such structure. If other passwords are easily derived from a known password, you should change all of them. – Gert Dec 10 '12 at 6:53
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Then change all passwords with that structure. If you think it's compromised => Change it – Lucas Kauffman Dec 10 '12 at 6:54
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You shouldn't be re-using (or even remembering) passwords for most things anyway. That's what we have password managers like KeePass for. In reality you should never really need to remember more than 4 passwords - your system encryption password, your OS login password, your password manager password, and your email account password (allows recovery of most passwords in the case of losing your password database). Everything else goes in your password manager, and is unique + properly random. – Polynomial Dec 10 '12 at 12:33
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up vote 0 down vote

Do you mean like... if someone watching you saw it? I'd change it if they seemed to have malicious intent, or your password is short and easy to remember. If you have a long secure password, it's not something wo worry about.

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passwords save in clear text in browser and another access it. or another wireless clients can sniff the Urls that exchange. – saber tabatabaee yazdi Dec 12 '12 at 8:14

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