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Passwords Can Sit on Hard Disks for Years

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the my-password-is-31337 dept.

CygnusXII writes ""As people spend more time on the web and hackers become more sophisticated, the dangers of storing personal information on computers are growing by the day, security experts say. There are some obvious safeguards, such as never allowing your computer to store your passwords. But even that is no guarantee of security." "

2 of 449 comments (clear)

  1. P2P by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's amazing how easy it is to find people's password files shared on P2P apps like DirectConnect, Gnutella, etc. There's everything - Total Commander (FTP), WS FTP, mail clients, you just have to search for the proper file name.

  2. Re:Hehe by Mortoc · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The fact that a password can sit on a hard drive is really irrevelent. If someone has access to your hard drive, they might as well just set up a keylogger and wait till you access a bank account or something, that would be much easier than wading through hundreds of megabytes of swap. This security hole is almost completely irrevelent, the only time that I would worry about something like that is when throwing away a a computer (which should be recycled anyway). Someone interested enough could go through your trash, removed an old hard drive and start snooping around.