Windows 11 now warns when typing your password in Notepad, websites

Windows 11 22H2 was just launched, and with it will come a new stability aspect known as Enhanced Phishing Protection that warns buyers when they enter their Windows password in insecure purposes or on web-sites.

Windows login qualifications are precious to risk actors as they let them to entry inside company networks for info theft or ransomware attacks.

These passwords are normally obtained as a result of phishing attacks or by end users saving their passwords in insecure programs, such as word processors, textual content editors, and spreadsheets.

In some conditions, only typing your password in a phishing login sort, and not distributing them, is sufficient for them to be stolen by threat actors.

To fight this conduct, Microsoft introduced a new function referred to as ‘Enhanced Phishing Protection’ that warns people when they enter their Windows password on a web page or enter it into an insecure software.

“SmartScreen identifies and safeguards towards company password entry on documented phishing websites or apps connecting to phishing websites, password reuse on any application or web page, and passwords typed into Notepad, Wordpad, or Microsoft 365 applications,” points out Microsoft Protection Merchandise Manager Sinclaire Hamilton.

“IT admins can configure for which situations finish users see warnings by means of CSP/MDM or Team Coverage.”

This new attribute is only available in Home windows 11 22H2 at this time, and it is not enabled by default. It also needs you to log into Home windows with your Windows password instead than use Windows Hello.

So if you use a PIN to log in to Windows, this attribute will not work.

When enabled, Microsoft will detect when you enter your Windows password and then situation a warning prompting you to remove the password from an insecure file or, if entered on a website, to improve your Home windows password.

How to help Enhanced Phishing Protection

Even though Windows 11 22H2 has Phishing defense enabled by default, the possibilities to safeguard your passwords are disabled.

To help these options, go to Commence > Settings > Privacy & security > Home windows Stability > Application & browser management > Track record-based mostly defense configurations.

Underneath the Phishing security area, you will see two new choices labeled ‘Warn me about password reuse’ and ‘Warn me about unsafe password storage.’

When enabled, the ‘Warn me about password reuse’ possibility will lead to an notify to be exhibited when you enter your Windows password on a site, regardless of whether it is a phishing website or a legitimate internet site.

The ‘Warn me about unsafe password storage’ selection will alert you when you type your password into an application like Notepad, Wordpad, and Microsoft Place of work and then push enter.

To secure your passwords, set a checkmark in both solutions to allow them, as revealed in the graphic underneath. When you allow each individual solution, Home windows 11 will show a UAC prompt, which you must accept.

BleepingComputer designed a check account on our Home windows 11 22H2 device and entered our password into Notepad to take a look at this aspect.

As you can see down below, at the time we typed the password and pressed enter, Windows 11 displayed a warning stating, “It can be unsafe to shop your password in this app,” and suggested we take away it from the file.

We also analyzed this function in other programs, this kind of as WordPad, Microsoft Word 2019, Excel 2019, OneNote, and Notepad2. We had been not capable to check this in Microsoft 365, which Microsoft claims is supported by the characteristic.

While Windows 11 warned us about our password in WordPad and Microsoft Word, it shockingly did not alert us when typing it into Excel, OneNote, and Notepad2, which should be fixed.

This is specially correct for Microsoft Excel, as it’s known to be utilised to generate password lists.

We also tested the password reuse function by trying to log in to Twitter with our Windows password working with Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge. The moment we entered our password, Windows 11 displayed the subsequent notify warning us to transform our Windows password.

Having said that, the Improved Phishing Protection characteristic did not get the job done when testing Mozilla Firefox.

All round, this is an outstanding new safety function for Home windows people, and it is strongly advised that you use it to safeguard oneself from phishing attacks and from preserving your passwords in insecure information.

However, there is nevertheless lots of room for advancement, with Microsoft needing to develop the security element to assist more browsers and apps.