Today my Password bank was deleted - for the second time! 1st time was a few months ago - I had to re-import form my old browser and try to remember/recreate/”forgot my password” for all the rest.
The 2nd time was today. It was a typical “wake from sleep”, web pages were restored. I was still logged into Outlook from my previous session. I was opening emails and using links. The hard-sell commercial webpages I used even worked with the shields up. However, the accounts, usernames, and passwords are ALL gone - no entries at all, except the new one I created today (which is how I discovered the problem) The websites I have opted to DECLINE are still there/remembered/saved. Also, the history for all my visited sites and downloads are still there. (I just quickly scrolled back 3 months.) This seems to be an Accounts & Passwords issue only.
Brave Version: 1.81.136
Windows 10 Pro Version 1790 for 64 bit systems (2021-05)
I’m so very frustrated and I really rely on the saved passwords! But for this to happen a 2nd time, something is truly wrong. Please, someone help fix!
In the mean time, How can I create a backup of my saved passwords from Brave?
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@tappingtam thank you for reporting. Yes this is an issue that has not yet been resolved and may be an upstream/Chromium issue. That said that is really frustrating. Are there any other details you can tell us about any actions taken before the passwords were deleted?
Also, you can export your passwords by going to brave://password-manager/settings:
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Thank you. I noticed the export option as i was importing again from Firefox (even though this password bank is a year+ old). Unfortunately, I don’t really remember anything unusual. My computer goes into hibernation mode each night. I woke it up, all my open windows (folders and apps) were still there. Brave had only Outlook open. (I don’t like using the app version, and always use the web version.) I read mail and opened a link from an email. I watched some sales videos (the kind that doesn’t have controls or time displays). Made a purchase from it. i made a new login for this purchase. I got confused on something and went to check the new login and that’s when I noticed the ridiculously small password bank - of only 1!!
Would webpage history be of any help??
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Forgot; type of device: Dell Latitude laptop; intel CORE i7
Tags on the bottom have worn so the writing is just guesses. lol
It’s old, but works, and I haven’t had a good reason to get rid of it nor a good enough reason to replace.
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Webpage history will not be useful I don’t think. It is interesting that it was just passwords and nothing else. I’ve reached out to a couple of team members who better versed about this issue to take a look. In the meantime do you by chance remember whether or not the circumstances of losing your pw data this time are the same as last time? No special/out of the ordinary actions taken before the issue occured?
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I cannot remember anything out of the ordinary for the 1st time I lost passwords either.
Sorry I don’t have more clues.
@tappingtam Long and short of it overall is that it has been reported to be a Chromium issue, though debatable if it’s Chromium, purely Windows DP API (Data Protection API), or something else. But just has been some disconnect between the two where the encryption keys get lost.
99% of the time people see the login data still on their device if you navigate to your profile path, but it’s encrypted and can’t be read due to the encryption key being lost or corrupted.
Using sync has been a way that people have been able to circumvent any issues, as when it gets “lost” and creates a new key, it just obtains the passwords from the sync chain again and things continue to work flawlessly.
If you’re not going to use sync, then you’ll need to be prepared for any potential issue like this to happen or you’ll want to use an external password manager. Of course, regardless of what you do, exporting and keeping the passwords saved somewhere as a backup is usually a good idea.
The sad part is that this has been an issue for several years and absolutely no progress has been made on fixing the issue or preventing it from happening. Well, beyond just having to tell people they absolutely need to use sync, a password manager program/extension, or routinely export passwords for backups just so they have them if something goes wrong.
One day they might figure it out in greater detail. But people generally haven’t been able to replicate it and certainly haven’t identified the driving force behind it when it does occur. Essentially they just narrowed it down to the bit I mentioned.
Other OS haven’t had as much of a problem, though it can still happen if their keyring/keychain has problems. It’s addressed a bit at https://support.brave.app/hc/en-us/articles/29808985123085-Sensitive-data-storage
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Thank you @Mattches and @Saoiray for your help, information, and support in this.
Can you please tell me more about Syncing. What am I syncing to? Where and how do I set up the sync?
@tappingtam more in-depth information would be in the links below. You can think of it in simple terms that it’s basically protected cloud storage. It’s kept on some servers as encrypted strings that can only be unencrypted by your devices. It’s a bit more complex than that, but is more of the very simple way of trying to explain.
And beside their official stuff, you can see some of what I have written for people in links below.
So I’m syncing to a Brave cloud.
I do use Brave on both my iPhone and my windows Dell laptop. However, there are certain website accounts I do NOT want to be accessible from my phone, specifically banking/credit cards. Also, I like to enter manually my email password on my laptop so I actually remember it. But that is impractical on my phone. Is there anyway to keep my current account use arrangements ?
I read At this time, iOS Sync only Syncs bookmark data. We are working to include all data types in Sync as soon as possible.
But since I am initiating the sync from my laptop, will passwords still be saved to the phone? And will phone/iOS passwords transfer to the laptop?
“Removing a device from the Sync chain will stop any data from syncing to or from that device. Your local data will be retained but all the data in the Brave’s Sync cache will be deleted.” Based on this statement, I am assuming that the passwords physically created/saved on a device are stored in a separate file from the ones imported via Sync. So removing from the chain will delete all the passwords imported, even if used regularly. (I’m trying to understand the logistics for future use/management/troubleshooting.)
@tappingtam I haven’t read the detailed links I shared earlier but if it said that iOS only syncs bookmark data, then it’s outdated and incorrect. Passwords are synced and can be used.
Basically when you sync you get to choose which data is synced. Then what happens is everything gets lumped together. So like all passwords saved in your Brave browser on your iPhone gets combined with all the passwords saved on your Brave browser on your desktop. From there, any change you make gets made on the other. They mirror each other via the sync.
Keep in mind that on iPhone you probably are using iCloud for your password manager and autofill. If that’s the case, I don’t think the things you save in Brave would show up naturally there. At least it didn’t used to and I’m not sure if anything changed.
What I’m referencing on that is to check your iOS settings. Settings → General → Autofill & Passwords. From there you can choose which apps to use for autofill and passwords storage. If you don’t have Brave selected, then your phone doesn’t check there for it.
Negative, it’s all together. It just has your folders on the devices and then it has the copy on the sync server. If you stop the server then it just stops it from fetching future changes. It will retain everything it had before.
The better way of phrasing is that you can’t delete passwords or data from devices remotely. Sync doesn’t give that type of access. You can only choose whether it remains active to continue sharing and receiving data from the other synced devices and/or the sync server.
@tappingtam I guess let me see if I can possibly phrase things simpler. You know when we use iPhone, a lot of our data gets synced to our iCloud account, right? So if you go to your Mac or another iPhone, you can tend to fetch it using the username and password?
Or on Android and Chrome, it uses a person’s Google/Gmail account. It keeps it all there and if you login on that account on any other device, you can access your passwords, contacts, and other details?
The same types of things exist for Vivaldi, Firefox, and others. There’s almost always the options for some web backup or sync functionality as people use multiple devices and tend to want to easily access the same info.
Brave Sync is the same thing. It’s just an account where the data is saved and shared. But unlike the others, it doesn’t have a username and password to login. Instead they just do it with this daily expiring sync code. It’s meant to be more secure but it’s also a little more annoying because you can’t rely on it for a permanent backup like you might do on the others.
In that case you wouldn’t be able to sync that data between or you would have to get it synced with perhaps a second browser profile that you might use on your desktop. But otherwise it’s basically all or nothing for each category of passwords, bookmarks, etc.
Thank you. That does help. I also have since read the Understanding Brave Sync which addressed some of this as well. I will play with the toggle on/off and other options and see if I can obtain the set up I like. If not, just doing a periodic 1 time sync will also help and allow for better recovery if laptop passwords are wiped again.
FYI, The part about “At this time, iOS Sync only Syncs bookmark data. We are working to include all data types in Sync as soon as possible.” was in “How do I set up Sync?” section “Sync Data from your Mobile Device - iOS. “ and is referring to “To start a Sync Chain from Brave Browser on your iOS device:” so that may have an affect. I personally won’t be using this method. But you can pass on needed corrections if desired.
Thank you again!! I hope this helps others out there too!
