Android Password are stored in text files on Device

There has been a new discussion that has been triggered by a user over secuity of passwords stored in Android devices. The argument says that passwords aren’t stored in any form of encryption, and if anyone has access to root of the device, you could be seriously compromised.

The initial comment on Google Android discussion forums read as “The password for email accounts is stored into the SQLite DB which in turn stores it on the phone’s file system in plain text.Encrypting or at least transforming the password would be desirable.”

Another user wrote “It would be nice to see this solved… I personally think that delivering a quick update with MD5 encryption would be a fast patch for the moment. I don’t know what security system uses Google in their servers but I’m sure they don’t store passwords in plain text, so implementing the same security system would be nice…”

Another user wrote “In summary, I feel this has been blown WAY out of perspective and most of the people seem to not quite get it. What I believe should happen with this issue is the following:

1) High Priority – Google should verify that all of their applications are secure without saving any sensitive information in plain text – probably mostly if not entirely already done.

2) Medium/High Priority – If not already done so, Google should provide a simple, easy and secure way to encrypt data (not sure if this is already done.)

3) Low Priority – This is a far lower priority and the most complex – Google should build a process to identify applications that do not store data security and notify consumers.”

The debate over storing of information in such manner has taken a new turn with users taking the discussion to a new level. We don’t know, how true is the fact of storing passwords in such a manner? Anyways, there hasn’t been any official reply on this topic from any Android representative. Google runs these forums and someone from Android team must have seen the topic, but seeing no reply from them gives credit to the arguing point.