It's an uncomfortable truth, but your Web browser probably knows more about you than your best friend. It's just a fact of life online. Your browser knows your name, your browsing habits, your interests, your bank balance, your passwords... in essence it really knows everything about you -- and this is something that Mozilla Labs wants to capitalize on!

Introducing: the Account Manager add-on for Firefox.

Mozilla Labs posed a simple question: why should you have to input passwords on every site you visit? Your browser is you. You shouldn't need to identify yourself every time! With Account Manager, website developers can let Firefox handle your sign-ins. Account Manager works behind the scenes so that you don't have to -- in theory you don't even know your name or password for a site: Firefox manages it for you. Changing your identity is a matter of selecting another name from a drop-down box in Firefox -- Account Manager does the rest.

It's an exciting concept and, given the surge of tailored-to-the-user functionality that we're seeing in Web browsers (the Chrome new tab page!), I think this is just the tip of the iceberg. Support of other authorization schemes like OpenID and HTTP Auth is next... exciting!

The experimental add-on is available for download on Mozilla's Account Manager site if you'd like to try it out.

Built-in Account Manager coming to Firefox, heralds a new age of security and convenience originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 28 Apr 2010 10:00:00 EST.