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Comment by balaji1 | Hacker News Reader

What about just using chrome’s saved passwords and syncing?

It would be great if someone can succinctly destroy that idea :D

Then you're stuck with Chrome forever. Same with Firefox or Safari. I wish browser vendors would agree on one password sharing protocol that's just some end-to-end encrypted blob that you could download from any browser and unlock with your password. You login to your Firefox or Google account, add passwords, and if you want to use those from the other browser you just get some http link that points to the encrypted blob and then the other browser downloads the blob and you unlock it with a password.

You can export your passwords as a CSV file and import to other browsers (obviously if one chooses to do this, they should delete this file securely after it's been imported).

Firefox, Chrome, and Edge also allow you to import passwords between browsers natively. I'm not saying that I recommend relying on the browser-based password manager (personally I use KeePassX), but I wouldn't advise against it for the reason you're describing. Just sharing some info! Please let me know if I'm mistaken on any of this.

Sure, but if I have a Macbook with Safari and a Linux workstation with Firefox and a Windows gaming PC with Chrome, then I have to use a 3rd party service, right? I don't mind that personally, I'm just an old man yelling "You should have better interoperability between similar competing software services!" at clouds (in the literal and figurative sense).

Adding to this helpful comment:

Firefox doesn’t allow you to import a CSV in its default config. You need to enable it (it’s straightforward) and there is a guide here: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1328161

Then you can import to eg Safari to have it all in iCloud Keychain.

I use this and it's convenient but the fact that Google can wipe out my entire digital identity on a whim scares me.

That’s always there. People rely on the google a lot. Have apps in play Store, run YT channel. And other platforms similarly have power over their user base.

Google nuked an old email address of mine which was using a custom domain (free Workspace account). That email contained all my correspondence for a period of about 10 years. No way to restore it, no way to flag it to anyone at Google. I have been slowly removing Google services from my life, one of the last transitions being to Kagi.

You're telling like they didn't send tons of notifications emails before they did so, eh? And after they "nuked" (you lost your access), you still had months of time to pay and restore access.

And besides, if it was your private domain, you could submit that to google (I didn't follow up, but perhaps they spared the nuke for regular folks who just used their custom domain with gmail)

I am more worried not having access to my REGULAR Gmail account, with none to contact with, rather than G Workspace.

More info about browser password management in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34149738

Reply on news.ycombinator.com