# Password Managers--It's All about Trust and Transparency
## 4 Results
### Online Questionnaire Study
#### 4.3.2 Users of Password Managers
So, most users (64%) do not fully understand or are not sure how their passwords are processed in password managers. This finding implies that more work needs to be done to increase the level of transparency between users and password managers regarding storing and processing passwords. In detail, we found that half of Chrome users did not know how their passwords are processed, while half of LastPass users did not know or were not sure. Shockingly, no Dashlane users knew about the process while the majority of Safari and Apple (Keychain) users did not know or were not sure about the process. In contrast, six users of 1 Password and four users of KeePass knew about the process. We asked our user participants if they felt confident to use a browser extension to fill in passwords; 65% felt confident while 10% did not feel confident to do so. However, three non-expert users chose \"not applicable\", which implies that they do not use a browser extension (one Chrome, one Firefox, one Safari user). The vast majority of Chrome, LastPass and 1 Password users feel confident to use a browser extension to fill in passwords, which means the browser extensions of password managers are useful for most users. One of the questions in the study is to see if users are aware of password synchronization using a vendor's service; 72% of users were aware of this while only 9% were not aware. We found that the majority of users of Chrome, LastPass, 1 Password, Dashlane, KeePass, Safari and Keychain were aware of it. Another question is about trusting the vendors of password managers to store all passwords. We found that 51% of users of password managers trust the vendors of password managers to store all their passwords while the other half of users either do not trust them or are neutral about it. This finding is surprising as around half of users do not trust or have little trust in vendors. As a result, password managers need to be more transparent about stored passwords to gain users' trust. In detail, we found that many users of Chrome, LastPass and 1 Password trust the vendors to store all their passwords. In contrast, the other half of users of these popular password managers either do not trust them or have little trust in them. Also, three Dashlane users do not trust them while four Safari users are not sure about the vendors. Moreover, another answer shows that users of password managers are concerned about their stored passwords; 50% of users of password managers are worried about losing all their stored passwords, while only 33% do not worry about it. The reasons for this result could be related to storing passwords in the cloud (3 rd party), or to the lack of transparency as users do not see what is happening to their own passwords at the other end. In detail, we found that more than half of users of Chrome, LastPass, Safari and Dashlane were worried about losing their passwords stored in these password managers. However, a few users of KeePass were not worried about losing passwords, as all the passwords are stored locally on the machine and are under the user's control. Additionally, we asked user participants if they trust password managers to delete their passwords permanently from their databases. The results show that 47% of users trust password managers, on the other hand 28% do not trust them at all, while 25% of users are not sure if their passwords will be deleted permanently. These findings indicate that 53% of users have trust and transparency issues regarding password managers deleting passwords because users do not see anything at the backend, so they do not know about their deleted passwords. In detail, many users of Chrome do not trust it to delete passwords from the database or are not sure about it, while many users of all the password managers either do not trust them or not sure if their passwords will be deleted.