Gmail password stored
A Client of ours is a gmail user. When they open Mozilla and press a shortcut it brings them directly into their gmail account and their mail is visible. They can create and send messages and do all the normal gmail things. Anything that asks for a password like in account settings responds that the stored password is incorrect. I went to the Mozilla password manager and viewed the stored password for that site and it is an old password. How are they getting into gmail is the stored password is not the current password. Is there a way to see the password that is being used?
All Replies (5)
hello tip32a, google might store the information that a user is logged in within a cookie that will usually expire after a few days (this will only contain a session id and no plain password). you'll probably have to find a way to reset the password again or else contact google's support to regain control of the account...
Hi Philipp, Thank you for the reply. All of this is understood. The cookie thing is "possible" but this has been working for months. I would like to keep a focus on Mozilla and not google support. I have tried their methods the n'th extreme. They acknowledge that older accounts are harder to reset due to the lack of user info available. One of the reset questions that MUST be answered is the data they opened the account not month and year but they want the day as well. I am an IT professional and cannot recall the EXACT day I opened my google account.
unfortunately i cannot think of any bits stored in firefox that would help with this situation (maybe the date of the old stored pw in the password manager can offer a clue on the account creation date)...
That is a good idea but did not work.
Did you try to remove that old password in the Password Manager?
You can try a Private Browsing mode window as that would disable cookies from the regular session.
If clearing cookies didn't help then it is possible that the cookies.sqlite file that stores the cookies got corrupted.
- Rename (or delete) cookies.sqlite (cookies.sqlite.old) and delete other present cookies files like cookies.sqlite-journal in the Firefox profile folder in case the file cookies.sqlite got corrupted.
You can use this button to go to the currently used Firefox profile folder:
- Help > Troubleshooting Information > Profile Directory: Show Folder (Linux: Open Directory; Mac: Show in Finder)
You can remove all data stored in Firefox from a specific domain via "Forget About This Site" in the right-click context menu of an history entry ("History > Show All History" or "View > Sidebar > History") or via the about:permissions page.
Using "Forget About This Site" will remove all data stored in Firefox from that domain like bookmarks, cookies, passwords, cache, history, and exceptions, so be cautious and if you have a password or other data from that domain that you do not want to lose then make sure to backup this data or make a note.
You can't recover from this 'forget' unless you have a backup of the involved files.
It doesn't have any lasting effect, so if you revisit such a 'forgotten' website then data from that website will be saved once again.