Firefox @lemmy.ml

11mo ago

Do you trust saving CC numbers in Firefox?

I'm just scared that they're saved with reversible encryption on the disk, then malware could steal them

93 comments

I recommend a password manager like Bitwarden, it has a great Firefox extension and it's very secure.
- I self host vault warden, and the card auto-fill works ~70% of the time, and about half of those, the security code or the expiration doesn't work. EBay is the first one that comes to mind. I know it's the websites not following standards or conventions. It happens often enough that I remember the dates and codes now because I end up having to fill them in so often.
  
  Protip: if a field doesn't populate, right click on it, then choose "copy name for bitwarden" (or something like that, not using FF in English), then add a custom field in the CC entry in bitwarden using that name in the clipboard. From now on on that specific page it will work
  
  I never had any issues with it
- It seems really bad at filling CC info though. Like, I don't think it works at all. I always need to copy the number separately.
  I still use it but it is annoying.
  
  Its less annoying than having to get up to get my wallet
  
  Not for me. It works every time. Even on pages that disable pasting into the CC box, the BitWarden extension can still fill it in.

I trust it enough to use the feature, but I've got separate cards for online and in-person purchases. The online card is temporarily disabled in my bank app, and I only unblock it when I intend to use it. Takes like 30 seconds extra.
The in-person card is permanently unlocked for NFC and regular store transactions, but region locked to the country where I'm currently at, and transactions over $30 require the PIN.
- Out of curiosity, would it not take less than 30 seconds to type your CC numbers in online each time? I mean the month and ?ccv are easily memorable
  
  It being blocked still helps protect them if the card number gets snatched during a transaction. By the time the scammers are ready to use the card numbers, the card would be locked.
  
  Yeah sure, but a keylogger could read it at any time then, while cracking the locally saved card is more complex. And locking the card down unless explicitly needed also means that even if my card card does get compromised, it can't be used of very narrow and random windows, adding a nice layer of security.
- Are you in the EU?
  
  I'm an EU citizen and my cards are issued in the EU, but I live in Asia.

Please don't save stuff in your browser. It's very easy to rip those passwords and logins. If you must, keep it in a proper password manager like bitwarden or keepass.
- Yup, I only store testing creds for work use. My actual credentials are in a proper password manager.
  
  Historically, I've seen more "proper" password managers with breaches than browser storage.
- How about when using a primary password?
  
  Doesn't matter, can be bypassed on both firefox and chrome.

reversible encryption
All encryption is reversible, otherwise it wouldn't be encryption, it would be a hash. If you don't use a password, it's easy to reverse the encryption. If you do use a password, the maximum security with a brute force attack is 112 bits, which is pretty weak.
I recommend using a different password management service (which also handles credit card info), any password manager will be fine. I personally use Bitwarden, which uses 256 bits of encryption. That's pretty standard across password managers, so you're better of focusing on making a secure password.
That said, if you're only worried about credit card info and not storing passwords in Firefox, you're probably fine. Credit cards have a ton of protection, so if someone steals your card info, call your bank to dispute the fraudulent transactions and get a new card, it doesn't cost anything and has little hassle. Debit cards are another story, so I recommend just not using debit cards at all online.
- Prepaid debit cards for the win. You need to buy something online? Open your banking app, transfer the amount to the card, pay. After that the card is empty and cannot be used to pay flr anything until you need it again.
  
  That sounds like way more effort than a credit card, especially here in the US where transfers between banks take 2-3 days.
  If you really want to avoid credit, you can lock your debit card and unlock it when you make a purchase. That's still annoying, but effective. But if you're responsible, there's really no reason to avoid credit, and you get rewards on top.
  
  You still lose the money, though. But I get your point for someone who's staunchly anti credit card
  
  banking app
  Cringe

If it's a credit card then you should have pretty decent protection against fraud from the credit card company. I've had my card details stolen a few times (though never directly from my browser) and each time the credit card company has identified the fraud and reached out to me within minutes.
Now if it's a debit card, you should NEVER put those numbers into a computer. I only ever use my debit card to access the ATM, and even that is rare.
- Sounds like a very US specific answer. In EU I only have a debit card and sometimes I have a hard time using it even myself because I need to pass 2fa and sometimes even that isn't enough if I'm on a new browser
  
  Credit cards work the same everywhere, it's not US-specific. My debit card actually only has my bank account number on it (but I think that actually is a Germany-only thing with our Girocards), so paying for stuff online is just a normal bank transfer, where yeah you do have to pass the bank's 2FA (unless it's via SEPA direct debit).
  mostly, my card requires me to confirm some charges in a special phone app, I don't think that's a thing everywhere since it's also fairly recent
  
  This is on account of the concept of SCA (Strong Customer Authentication) from PSD2 (Payment Services Directive), an EU-regulation.
- That's only true for debit cards that aren't backed by master card or visa. When you use your debit card that is online, it's run as a credit card and has the same fraud protections.
- I don't use debit cards anywhere for this exact reason. Don't even have one. When I have in the past, I've had the card linked to a seperate bank account with a small balance and no overdraft protection to limit damage. What I'd found though is that even when you tell the bank not to enable overdraft protection, they conveniently forget that and it stays possible to overdraft your account and get hit with fees,
  I do the same strategy for crypto wallets, there's only a small amount in my browser wallet so that if somebody gets it, they can't steal much. From there you can have varying degrees of storage security for larger amounts: multi-sig so you have to sign transactions using multiple devices, hardware wallets, and cold storage.
  I see all these articles about people getting thousands of dollars stolen from their crypto wallet and I'm like, you put $3,000 on the same computer you play Zombie Run 4 on? Knowing there was no fraud protection? And that a hardware wallet costs $100? Or that multi-sig is free? If you are storing that much in crypto, you need to either educate yourself on safe storage or use a custodian you can trust (exchange, multi-sig with family member, etc) who can.

More likely to be stolen in person at your local coffee shop

I don't even trust Steam, let alone Mozilla. I don't think I've ever had any credit card auto-fill on any browser I've ever had

With credit cards any fraud is the responsibility of the credit card processor not the individual. So the risk isn't on your side.

I simply use my credit card number for my password on every site. it makes it so much easier to remember both. back in the day i would use my social security number. thanks to that simple trick, i never get robocalls or spam and i've been removed from most mailing lists because no one will ever issue credit or do business of any kind with me. a hacker stole my identity once and my credit score quadrupled. he even gave my identity back a week later!
- You joke but back in the 90s when I first used the internet in the library I had to choose a password for the email. And the requirements were weird. Needs to be an exact length, letters, numbers, and so on. Then I realized my country SSN was a perfect match with the requirements! "Wow that's perfect, so I gonna use that as a password, nobody gonna guess that" - the naïve boy thought. Of course it was hacked by some other classmate that got the same conclusion and I realized that it wasn't that perfect and that almost everyone had the same idea due to the strict exact length requirements. (SSN in my country can be easily found again if you know name and DOB)

The number being somewhere on your computer isn't something I'd worry about. The real risk is from a liberal autocomplete that might throw it into website forms where you don't want it to be, including hidden ones. Maybe there are protections in place since I last let Firefox save anything like this, but it used to try pasting address and CC info whenever it could.

No, i use keepass and coppy/paste like the other commenter

I don't trust saving my CC numbers anywhere. And considering how many times retailers have been hacked and had that kind of information stolen I wish it were law that no one could save them.

I do trust it well enough, but I don't use it.
For starters, I don't want it to be too easy to spend money. If I want something, I should want it enough to pull my card out and type the number again.
Second, the auto-fill often doesn't work perfectly, so you need the card anyway.
Third, there's the slim chance it could be hacked. So why even take that chance when the only benefit is convenience

Fuck no.

Absolutely not.

I put it into my password manager. (KeePassXC with Syncthing to share the database)

I don't save them in Firefox, not because I don't trust Firefox, just because keeping them in a password manager is more convenient. I don't think there's a reason not to trust Firefox.

If Firefox can read it from disk without a password, any other program running as your user can read it from disk without a password. But to prevent this you can encrypt your Firefox profile with a password.

I keep those kind of numbers in Keepassxc and cut and paste them when I need them. It's not that I don't trust FF I just think having one storage place is better than having two and it's just not necessary for FF to have them. A few extra seconds of copy pasting inconvenience is a price I'm happy to pay. For extra security I never cut and paste the CVC, that's always manual entry from memory.

I leave a number wrong. The security code, date, whatever. I can remember one number and correct the autofill while making an attempt to keep things a little more secure and still convenient.

I would totally trust it, but on a cyber security stand point I don't trust anything with my credit card. The only place where the numbers are stored are on the physical card itself

No. If I want my CC number I just…..look at my CC

I'm also kinda wary of saving cards in the browser. So I created a virtual card with a spending limit for that purpose.
Although there's more to fear from malware stealing saved passwords. Fraudulent transactions can be reversed, identity theft will do a lot more damage.

No... not leaving cc on any browser... I use KeepassXC and setup to clear anything in the clipboard within 10 seconds

If you've got credit card paranoia, Privacy.com has a solution for you. I personally just rely on my credit cards theft/fraud protection programs.
- Privacy.com won't solve this problem. In fact, it's likely more insecure than saving your information locally.

Your saved passwords are reversible too, just don't do it. If you really want to, put a password on it, but then why would you even save it at all? The convenience is lost at that point. And if you save it without a password, to decrypt the cc a decryption key has to be saved somewhere, and if it's not on your pc, it's saved on a server you don't own.

I actually memorised my credit card number including the expiration date and security code. it's very convenient and I highly recommend it.

Temporary card numbers are awesome. Some CC providers give you one, otherwise you can use a service like privacy.com. You can also pay for things in crypto and keep only a limited amount of crypto in your browser-based wallet or do multi-sig so you have to approve transactions from two different devices. This can help minimize loss from an attack.

It's the banks problem, to be frank. If you're in the US, your liability for fraud is capped by law at $50 per card.

If you have malware on the machine it could just steal it when you use it the next time.

I simply do not use this feature.

I don't. But even if I did, I wouldn't have much use for it as I use single-use debit cards generated via my bank app or TatraPay (my bank's instant method of QR code payments) if the merchant has that option. I just wish there was a universal method for instant QR code payments. It's pretty convenient.

I don't think that is encrypted at all. Just like your passwords and cookies, they aren't either.

93 comments