4.0RC has a default of 30 minutes if you are using the master password.

You can go into about:config to security.password_lifetime and change the number (measured in minutes) to something else. I don't know if it can be completely disabled if you are using the master password option.

If you want, there is a very small add-on that lets you control the timeout of the master password. I use it since I tend to change the timeout depending on what I'm doing. It can be found at:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/master-password-timeout/

This does not resolve my particular issue. The prompt appears on its own without me navigating to a website. In Firefox 3.6 and earlier, I was not prompted for my master password unless I navigated to a page with a password field in it. Now it prompts me whether I'm navigating or not, which is annoying to say the least. Is there a way to switch it back to its original behavior?

I've attempted to enter my master password after resetting it on my imac, and it still does not accept the password. I hope someone is able to assist, otherwise I'll be relegated to using Safari until corrected

@MNgoldenEagle: I quite agree. Until I found out about this change I was actually worried about why the page I happened to be on was suddenly asking for password information - the prompt should only appear after it is needed, not just after the time period and this is something that shouldn't have got past the RC stage.

"You can go into about:config to security.password_lifetime and change the number (measured in minutes) to something else."

That seems to change nothing but number showing in the config file.

And the add-on changes nothing, the popup just keeps popping up intrusively.

I agree with the others, that this Master password pop-up without a real cause is annoying and kind of made me think maybe I had a virus or someone has hacked into my computer or something, kind of scary. It wasn't like this in all the earlier version of Mozilla that I have used, I really don't want to go back to using IE as my default browser.

Real Sad

I have the same problem. Everytime I change to a different webpage, I'm asked for my master security password. I'm tempted to delete it a go back to remembering every password but.....

anyone have a fix for this yet? the password prompt seems to just come up at random times whenever it wants. the only thing changing the config file did was at least it only asks once per session now

This is maddening to the point that I'm ready to ditch FireFox after many many years of being a loyal supporter.

That dialog pops up at some random time soon after starting FF, and almost every day I find I have just typed some complicated URL into the password box, or I have just navigated down the URL list searching for the one I want, and that damn stupid dialog pops up and destroys it all.

As a software architect and UI designer, I consider this to be the epitome of bad design. Asynchronously interrupting the user at some random time is unforgivable - even Microsoft are steadily abolishing this practice, and it's about time Mozilla did too.

Me too. Despite having security.ask_for_password set to zero, I'm getting prompted all the time.

I'm using FF 6.0.1 on Win7 Pro x64 with the following add-ons:

• Adblock Plus 1.3.9
• Flashblock 1.5.15.1
• IE Tab + 2.04
• Status-4-Evar 2011.7.20.21
• Theme Font & Size Changer 2.0
• Unhide Passwords 1.2.7.0

Is any of these add-ons known to provoke this constant prompting for the master password?

EDIT: Restarting FF6.0.1 with add-ons disabled does not suppress this bug. It must be part of the main code base.

Why is it that there are no answers on this "support" forum? Is it all questions and no answers? Is anybody listening? This question has been unanswered for 5 months!

OK, I think I know what's causing this. It's simply Firefox Sync running in the background. It needs the security device master password to run.

Does anyone concur?

Excellent suggestion regarding Firefox Sync, bweissman. I have disabled it and will monitor to see if I keep getting the frequent prompts. After a couple of days, I will check back in to provide my findings. -TD

I figured this out because on one of my 3 devices, Sync fails 100% of the time. I have no idea why. It works on my other 2 machines. But I would get prompted for password and then a minute later, I'd get Sync "unknown error."

It works on my HP desktop XP computer & my iPhone. It fails every time on my Win7 Dell laptop. I have no idea why. But I do know that un-registering my Win7 laptop from Sync causes the password prompts to cease.

Yep, that was it. Thanks for the suggestion, great find!

Software Security Device asking for password over and over and over... Sync isn't active, my yahoo was hacked recently, or rather yahoo in general is the forums are to be believed... Dumb master password, I liked f-fox, but this is more than annoying and f-fox inc does not seem to be attending the issue!! Mac seems to like safari, I guess I'll give it another shot. Good luck to those who have to stay

Your suspicions about Sync sound plausible. I have been using Firefox's V8.0 (and most prior versions) since it came out, and never had the security request problem until I activated Sync a few days ago. I have full Livedrive cloud synchronizing for my main file areas, but it is not practical to have the bookmark file handled in Livedrive, so the Firefox Sync seemed an ideal solution. Surely Mozilla can fix this one shortly for us. The timing for the unwanted password message would seem to coincide with the usual time for most cloud storage systems to issue automated polling requests, so is it possible that this may explain what is triggering the password request?