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How to sync smartphone without entering password on smartphone -- I'm keystroke-capture malware wary

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My smartphone asks me to enter a password in order to sync from my smartphone. But I'm wary of potential malware that could capture my keystrokes while entering the password.

On my laptop, I use copy and paste of passwords in order to not expose my passwords to potential keystroke-capture malware that not even my antivirus can detect. But I have no password files on my smartphone. So that procedure probably won't work for the smartphone unless, say, I send a file to my smartphone and then open the file on the smartphone to copy and paste a password from the file. But that procedure is kind of complicated, and I'm not even sure that that prcedure would be secure. And even if secure, how would I do that?

But a simpler question is this: Can I sync my smartphone without entering a password in the smartphone? Can I do it all on my laptop? Can I tell Firefox on my laptop what smartphone I want to be synced -- say by using some unique ID for my smartphone?

The particular smartphone I would like to use appears to have promotional adware running in the background to push for installing various apps. So I'm especially wary of potential keystroke-capture software packaged with that adware.

But even if I use a different smartphone, can I be sure it has no malware on it?

My smartphone asks me to enter a password in order to sync from my smartphone. But I'm wary of potential malware that could capture my keystrokes while entering the password. On my laptop, I use copy and paste of passwords in order to not expose my passwords to potential keystroke-capture malware that not even my antivirus can detect. But I have no password files on my smartphone. So that procedure probably won't work for the smartphone unless, say, I send a file to my smartphone and then open the file on the smartphone to copy and paste a password from the file. But that procedure is kind of complicated, and I'm not even sure that that prcedure would be secure. And even if secure, how would I do that? But a simpler question is this: Can I sync my smartphone without entering a password in the smartphone? Can I do it all on my laptop? Can I tell Firefox on my laptop what smartphone I want to be synced -- say by using some unique ID for my smartphone? The particular smartphone I would like to use appears to have promotional adware running in the background to push for installing various apps. So I'm especially wary of potential keystroke-capture software packaged with that adware. But even if I use a different smartphone, can I be sure it has no malware on it?

All Replies (3)

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hi, i don't think that this is a valid approach. any malicious software on your system able to capture your keystrokes is surely able to do the same with clipboard content. if you are distrusting a device to this point, i'd say it's better to not set up sync there at all.

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If you want passwords to be secure then you need to use a master password to add an extra encryption layer.