All saved passwords gone

[Octopuss]

I think this happens every few months, but I'm not sure at all.
Anyway, few days ago ALL my saved passwords were deleted from PM without any apparent reason.

Is this supposed to happen under some circumstances?

[moonbat]

If you've ever cleared history from preferences->privacy, and it was set to also delete saved passwords. Anyhow, use an open source password manager for redundancy, I can recommend Bitwarden, it supports Windows, Linux, Android, iOS and has browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox (which for obvious reasons won't work with Pale Moon, being Webextensions).

Could maybe be also if it got overwritten during sync with a different installation, though that shouldn't happen.

[Octopuss]

I didn't clean anything, nor am I using Sync. It just happened out of the blue (between sessions I presume, but I can't really tell because you don't notice immediatelly).

[Moonchild]

We're going to need a lot more information to go on other than "it randomly happens every few month, I think".
There must be a reason for this, but I'm afraid it might be something outside of the browser being involved. My own use of the browser (including several unstables) has never seen this happen in the last 10 years, nor has it been reported before like this to my knowledge.

maybe be also if it got overwritten during sync

This doesn't happen unless you explicitly delete passwords on a synced computer, OR force a replacement reset in sync.

[moonbat]

This doesn't happen unless you explicitly delete passwords on a synced computer, OR force a replacement reset in sync.

Yeah, I meant the latter. It happened to someone else here within the last month as I recall - they had triggered a sync from a fresh install and it overwrote the existing sync data.

[Moonchild]

Off-topic:

This doesn't happen unless you explicitly delete passwords on a synced computer, OR force a replacement reset in sync.

Yeah, I meant the latter. It happened to someone else here within the last month as I recall - they had triggered a sync from a fresh install and it overwrote the existing sync data.

A fresh install won't overwrite the existing sync data!
What happened with that person was that they had a fresh install on a new computer, synced the data to it, then started deleting data on the old computer, and those deletions being more recent got synced across to the new one.

Marking this offtopic since Octopuss is not using sync. Just as an aside.

[adesh]

Just a speculation, but it could be that some security software doesn't like Pale Moon passwords file and deletes it as part of its scan which is triggered once in a while.

[yereverluvinuncleber]

I have had the same happen once before and I had to restore the profile. I wasn't synching or doing anything strange.
I have, ever since, backed up the profile daily just in case it happened again - of course it hasn't happened since.

[somdcomputerguy]

Off-topic:

Anyhow, use an open source password manager for redundancy, I can recommend Bitwarden,

I use KeePass.

[Octopuss]

We're going to need a lot more information to go on other than "it randomly happens every few month, I think".
There must be a reason for this, but I'm afraid it might be something outside of the browser being involved. My own use of the browser (including several unstables) has never seen this happen in the last 10 years, nor has it been reported before like this to my knowledge.

I know.
If I could provide more information I would, but unfortunately I cannot. I know it did happen to me in the past few years a few times, and always after a long time (like months I would say at least).
So, I know there probably isn't a solution since it doesn't seem to be happening to others, or not often enough for it to be a known problem (if it's PM-related, which I cannot judge given the lack of useful information).


The only possible thing I can think of is after a very unfortunate appcrash which breaks more than just the session files, but to my uneducated head this doesn't make much sense either, because if a crash is serious enough, the entire profile usually seems to go down.

[Moonchild]

Yeah, I'm sorry I can't be of more help -- All I can suggest here is to keep very regular backups if this is known to happen on your system.

[Octopuss]

You mean the entire profile I presume.

[moonbat]

You mean the entire profile I presume.

Yeah. Since it's all self contained in one directory, easy to run a batch job to compress it on a schedule (but only when Pale Moon isn't running).

[coffeebreak]

the entire profile I presume

Backing up the entire profile periodically is a REALLY good idea.
But be aware that there are tools for backing up only your passwords.
I use Password Backup Tool for that.

You might also want to check out FEBE, which AFAIU (I haven't used it) allows to back up everything or selectively as you choose.

[John connor]

If this is Windows, you can navigate to a shadow copy and get your passwords back. If Pale Moon is anything like Firefox, then there are two files that store the passwords. And they are, key4.db and logins.json. These two files will be in your Pale Moon profile located in the:

Code: Select all

C:\Users\[your username]\AppData\Roaming\Moonchild Productions\Pale Moon\Profiles\[your_profile_name].default

folder. Replace [your username] with your computer's username and your_profile_name with the profile name.

Just go to the control panel and under folder options and turn on show hidden files, folders and drives. Now go under C drive under users and go from there. Or to make life easier. Download and install Everything.exe and search for the two files key4.db and logins.json. If you right click the files in Everything.exe you can go to their locations. Then you can make a shortcut of your profile folder to the desktop. https://www.voidtools.com/downloads/

Now to the shadow copy part. Windows backs everything up whether you know it or not. You can use a program called shadow copy view and find an old, but recent shadow copy and find the old key4.db and logins.json files.

https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/shadow_copy_view.html

Now I can't get the find to work. So what you do is find a recent shadow copy at the top and then at the bottom navigate to your Pale Moon profile where the key4.db and logins.json files are located at. Right click and chose Copy Selected Files To. And chose the desktop. Then copy those two files back to your profile folder. That should give your passwords back.

[John connor]

To backup your profile use this: https://www.palemoon.org/backuptool.shtml

[moonbat]

To backup your profile use this: https://www.palemoon.org/backuptool.shtml

Not required for anyone that isn't scared to use Windows Explorer.

C:\users\username\appdata\roaming\Moonchild Productions\Pale Moon\ contains the profile directory. All you have to do is copy the directory from here (multiple, if you've made multiple profiles) to a backup location while Pale Moon isn't running.

[Octopuss]

I have just done some cache clearing and whatnot, and SOME passwords are gone again. Bizzarrely, only some sites lost them.

Would it be possible to add a line in the clear history window to the relevant checkbox saying this thing will eliminate saved passwords? I have no idea which one it is, but one of them for sure.

[coffeebreak]

cache clearing and whatnot

Have never known cache clearing to remove saved passwords.
What was the "whatnot"?

Did you use "Forget about this site" ? It removes every possible category of history (and is the only thing I can think of to explain your issue, particularly since it's just "SOME" passwords).

See this SUMO article: "Remove a single website from your history"

[loxodont]

... and SOME passwords are gone again. Bizzarrely, only some sites lost them.

Happened to me 2 or 3 years ago with a major update to PM 27 (??). I can't remember what it was exactly, but it had to do with my stone age FF profile copied to Pale Moon (which worked well for a long time) and some changes to the password related database files (signons.sqlite, key3.db...)
I first thought some few passwords were lost, but in the remains I found some logins with outdated passwords, which led me to the conclusion PM was perhaps not "losing some passwords" but (re-)loads some outdated FF database file (or an old backup, living in the profile folder).
I'm really not sure about the causes and solution, but if your problem has to do with this old profile or file confusion, with "lost passwords" in GD search you might find those older posts (only 3 pages). One trick was to just rename those files... I remember it worked for me first, but then I decided to clean install Pale Moon (and import old bookmarks, pws...). Never regretted the clean up.