Reveal Gmail / Facebook Passwords In Any Browser With Simple Trick

You can easily reveal Gmail password in any browser by using this simple trick. Some of you may already know it, but this should be an eye-opener to those who choose to let browser 'save password'. It could be dangerous if you are a frequent visitor to cyber cafe or access your email accounts from public Internet joints. This could also help you reveal your forgotten Gmail password, without having to go through the entire password resetting process.

The trick requires a little, basic knowledge of HTML. You can try this on your own. Head over to Gmail and type your username. In the passwords section, type anything - because we're going to 'reveal' it. You'll see a series of dots in the password field that will hide any text that you type in it. It's time to reveal it!


Now, if you are in Chrome, right click in the passwords field and select 'Inspect Element' option (at the bottom of your right-click menu). Once you choose that option, you will see a window will open at the bottom of your browser that will show all the HTML code on the left and CSS (used for styling the web page) on the right. Spot the following code in the left pane. If you followed the instructions correctly, you'll see the following code already highlighted :-

Double-click on the 'password' so that you can edit it. Change it to -

For Facebook, it's -

Now click anywhere in the same pane so that the changes take effect. The hidden password is automatically converted into human readable text!

TIP: Make sure that you do all of this when no one's watching you - and I strongly recommend that you should NOT type your real password.

Security Issue?

I believe this could be a security issues with the browsers that offer to auto-fill the fields for you. Most of them will exclude the passwords fields. I never use such features; so I'm not sure if the passwords field is auto-populated.

Note that this only works when you have the passwords field is populated.

Those who're aware of HTML know that this isn't any magic thing. You're just changing the input type from password to text and the browser just follows your instruction and reveals the password. I wonder whether this needs to be addressed by the HTML. I'd like to hear your views on this.