Google Says Sorry After Passwords Vanish For 15 Million Windows Users
Google has said it is sorry after a bug prevented a significant number of Windows users from finding or saving their passwords. The issue, which Google noted started on July 24 and continued for nearly 18 hours before being fixed on July 25, was due to “a change in product behavior without proper feature guard,” an excuse that may sound familiar to anyone caught up in the CrowdStrike disruption this month.
The vanishing password problem impacted Chrome web browser users from all over the world, leaving them unable to find any passwords already saved using the Chrome password manager. Newly saved passwords were also rendered invisible to the affected users. Google, which has now fixed the issue, said that the problem was limited to the M127 version of Chrome Browser on the Windows platform.
The precise number of users to be hit by the Google password manager vanishing act is hard to pin down. However, working on the basis that there are more than 3 billion Chrome web browser users, with Windows users counting for the vast majority of these, it’s possible to come up with an estimated number. Google said that 25% of the user base saw the configuration change rolled out, which, by my calculations, is around 750 million. Of these, around 2%, according to Google’s estimation, were hit by the password manager issue. That means around 15 million users have seen their passwords vanish into thin air.
