PassLok has had a Chrome app version since 2.0, but now Google has announced that packaged Chrome apps will be discontinued in early 2018. Rather than wait for the blade to fall, we have worked hard to keep the nice features of hosting PassLok though Chrome, and we are adding Firefox in the process.
Beginning with version 2.4.3, therefore, PassLok Privacy has a Chrome extension version, which replaces the previous Chrome app version. Since now Firefox supports the syntax of Chrome extensions, we have made a Firefox add-on, with identical functionality. The new extension/add-on has a few advantages over the other forms of PassLok:
- It is protected from intrusion by other add-ons and extensions. You won’t have 1Password or LastPass offering to store your password—nice, but sot so nice what you stop to think that they can actually read your passwords and everything else you do—because they cannot load into the tab where PassLok Privacy resides.
- The data you have stored into PassLok (options, people’s Locks, ephemeral data for Read-once conversations) syncs between instances of the browser (Chrome or Firefox), so long as you have logged in with the same credentials. In other words, you can borrow someone else’s machine, or use a public machine, if you can’t (or won’t) use your own computer.
- This extends to the Chat function as well, which runs inside a frame with no exposure to interference by other code.
- Code integrity is ensured by the Chrome or Firefox stores, respectively. Both versions can be checked against each other if you’re feeling really paranoid.
There is one downside to the move, though, and this is that your data stored by the Chrome app will be overwritten with the move to the Chrome extension (which to Google are different apps). If you care about that data, do a Backup with the built-in function (there is a button on the Options tab), and save the output in a safe place before reloading Chrome (which will trigger the update, and the loss of your data); then re-make you account and load the backup item into the main box. When you decrypt it, it will be added to the (now empty) database.