I’m a huge fan of Google Chrome for lots of reasons.  I have my work Macbook Pro with me 90% of the time, to the point that I don’t even own another computer anymore.  When my wife wanted to get a new computer, because her ancient dell laptop died, I suggested we just share a Macbook Pro.  Anyway, getting it setup was super easy because all of my saved passwords, extensions, etc were synched with Chrome.

I lock my work computer all of the time, but realized that since we were sharing it, maybe I should password protect Chrome.  A simple google search landed me on the suggestions page with pages and pages of requests asking for a Master Password (similar to Firefox)

I thought the response by Blair, a Google employee was perfect.  I think there is a huge lack of this willingness to make a design decision and stand by it in the world.

Hi everybody,

We understand that many of you want a master password for your saved passwords in Google Chrome.  You’ve laid out many scenarios in which this might be useful, but the most common is that if your computer were to fall into the wrong hands, that person would then have access to your saved passwords.

While we agree that this situation would be terrible, we believe that a master password would not sufficiently protect you from danger. Someone with physical access to your computer could install a keylogger to steal your passwords or go to the sites where your passwords are stored and get them from the automatically filled-in password fields. A master password required to show saved passwords would not prevent these outcomes.

Currently, the best method for protecting your saved passwords is to lock your computer whenever you step away from it, even for a short period of time.  We encrypt your saved passwords on your hard disk. To access these passwords, someone would either need to log in as you or circumvent the encryption.

We know this is a long-standing issue, and we see where you’re coming from. Please know that your security is our highest priority, and our decision not to implement the master password feature is based on our belief that it creates a false sense of security instead of actually providing a strong security benefit.

Best,
Blair

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