Ever lost a password? I did today, and I found a “free password reveal tool”. Actually, what happenned was that I had a password saved in my browser, but I didn’t know what it was anymore and I wanted to change it. When I tried to change the password, it wanted the old one before I could enter a new one…and well, that was the start of a way to figure my password out.
Back in the day (like 10 years ago) I remember when we used to download all kinds of Windows utilities to do handy things, and there was this thing called a “password revealer” that I used to have. When you ran a small executable file it would open a “loupe” (fancy word for jewelers maginifying glass). When you moved the “loupe” over a password field it would turn the dots or asteriks into their real letters, numbers, and characters revealing the real password. w00t!
Now today I wanted to find this utility or a very good reason – I wanted to figure my own password out. Unfortuantely there are people out there who would want to use this tool for ill gotten gains, like hacking your myspace password, breaking into your hotmail account, or for an easy way to steal your yahoo password. What I’m saying is, I’m going to give you a tool you can use to reveal most saved password, but it would be in your best interest to uninstall when you were done to keep prying eyes from getting into your business! Like I said – there’s a reason that less than 100 people per month search for “password revealer”, but more than 2,000 each search for “hacking myspace password”, and “hotmail password stealer”?!?
When your dealing something like looking for a “password revealer” tool – a lot of the search results are spammy or trying to get you to buy some piece of software to solve your problem. I was lucky enough that Lifehacker saved the day (again) with their post Recover Lost Passwords. They linked to a site and post I forgot about – Snadboy’s Revelation 2.0, which is course is a freeware password revealer. It worked for me! If it doesn’t work for you, try some of the other tools on the Lifehacker page, and report back here what works and what doesn’t!