So why store passwords then? Doesn't that also lull users into a false sense of security?
It seems to me you won't make token efforts to protect a user's password because that protection would be an illusion. So you would rather tell them the truth, so to speak, by letting them discover that their passwords are all easily visible by anyone who sits down at their machine. But if that's really the best you can do (I'm accepting this claim for the sake of argument), why store the passwords at all? Just by offering to store the passwords you are lying to the user, and lulling them into dangerous behavior.
Do you have data that users expect the passwords to be shown, or that storing them and making them so easy to see has any positive effect on users' password hygiene or security behavior? As for me, I know never to ever allow Chrome to store any password. Has that made me more secure? And is that representative at all of the standard user? I highly doubt it, but don't have any evidence either way.
It seems to me you won't make token efforts to protect a user's password because that protection would be an illusion. So you would rather tell them the truth, so to speak, by letting them discover that their passwords are all easily visible by anyone who sits down at their machine. But if that's really the best you can do (I'm accepting this claim for the sake of argument), why store the passwords at all? Just by offering to store the passwords you are lying to the user, and lulling them into dangerous behavior.
Do you have data that users expect the passwords to be shown, or that storing them and making them so easy to see has any positive effect on users' password hygiene or security behavior? As for me, I know never to ever allow Chrome to store any password. Has that made me more secure? And is that representative at all of the standard user? I highly doubt it, but don't have any evidence either way.