The Firefox password manager is leaking information

It’s very annoying to have the master password dialog pop up every time you visit a site that has its password stored by Firefox. Let’s say that I want to browse reddit: when I open a reddit page, the master password dialog pops up. I don’t want to login, so I cancel the dialog.

Then I see an interesting story and open it in a new tab. Here comes the master password dialog and it gets killed again. Now I use the new tab to surf to /r/cpp. The master password dialog cheerfully strolls into view.

Popping a dialog when the user selects a user name filed would be better, as it avoids leaking membership information when visiting a web site. I would also like to see this dialog redesigned – right now it’s a simple application-modal message box with an editor widget in the middle. If you have ten tabs open and you open another tab to a site that has its password stored, you won’t be able to interact with any of the tabs until you either enter the master password or dismiss the master password dialog.