Google Apologises After Passwords Vanish For 15 Million Windows Users

Google has apologized after a bug prevented many Windows users from finding or saving their passwords. The issue first appeared on July 24 and lasted for nearly 18 hours before being resolved on July 25. The cause was a "change in product behavior without adequate functionality protections." That might sound like a familiar excuse to anyone caught up in the CrowdStrike mess 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 said it has now fixed the issue and that the problem is limited to the M127 version of the Chrome browser on the Windows platform.

How many Google users were affected by Chrome's password loss law?

The exact number of users who will be affected by the demise of Google's password manager is difficult to determine. However, given that there are over 3 billion Chrome browser users and Windows users make up the vast majority, it is possible to calculate a rough 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. This means that the passwords of around 15 million users have disappeared into thin air.

Chrome Password Manager Issue Now Completely Fixed

Google had said at the time that it had provided a temporary workaround that involved a particularly annoying process for the user of launching the Chrome browser with the command-line flag "-enable-features=SkipUndecryptablePasswords". Fortunately, the full fix that has now been rolled out requires users to simply restart their Chrome browser for the issue to take effect. Google thanked users for their patience and said it "apologises for any inconvenience caused by this outage and service." Chrome users who experience any impact beyond what's described should contact Google Workspace support, according to Google.