Another thing that’s often overlooked or never diagnosed… you may have a corrupt Chrome profile. Since you lost everything anyways, and I assumed synced up with Google, just wipe all the profiles and start a new one, sign in and sync.. etc.. I had this happen 2 times in the last 3 years or so on Linux (I believe once on OS X too) Chrome won’t complain or even mentioned a corrupted profile, since it just starts the corrupted pieces over (why you’re loosing cookies sessions) More on reddit.com

This happened to me a couple of times after years of working so I gave up and started using the Gmail app.

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Not all passwords are 'worth' the same and you don't have to put them all in the same level of 'safe'. So yes it is likely safe enough to put facebook and reddit and the like passwords in a google/firefox/whatever cloud password manager. However! My advice for passwords that are critical to you (such as everything to do with money/financials): Store them in a place where you and only you have access. In many situations a password written on a sheet of paper stored in a drawer of your desk might be a less risky option than storing it in any kind of cloud based password manager that can be compromised in many different ways including because of your own inadvertence. You don't have to write the full password down, you can 'salt' it anyway you want with something that only you know. You don't have to write the intended use of that password down on that sheet either. If someone finds that sheet of paper with that password they still don't know what it can be used for nor how to use it as it is salted. (With salting I mean adding/subtracting something from the password or, better, using a method/formula to alter it. A simple example for a formula is to add 1 to each second letter in the password, stupidly simple but no-one will ever find out if you don't tell them.) If you choose to store these passwords electronically then absolutely opt for a stand alone password manager on a computer that you know cannot be compromised easily, preferably one you don't use on the internet. Do use a renown open source password manager for this. For backup reasons you could store the password fault (and only the vault) from such a tool on a second computer or on some cloud storage, preferably after having encrypted it a second time, although this last step is more something for the paranoiac. Always use different passwords for each of these 'critical' services, never ever use the same password twice. If you're using passwords with a complexity that is considered 'safe' I don't think you have to change those passwords on a regular base, at least this is my opinion, unless you have handed out that password yourself to someone else of course. I personally have a dead-man-switch too. Just in case something happens my beloved are not let down they still be able to access these accounts without having to go through a lot of trouble. More on reddit.com

Does anyone have info on how this happens? Are there any articles?

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