Keychain secure Note - Text inside disappeared

Question

Keychain secure Note - Text inside disappeared

I used to protect my passwords in a Secure Note in my keychain.
Today I can see the note, I can open it with my password but It's completely empty... all my passwords ... gone!
How is It possible? and how can I recover them? maybe using my Time Machine? ( are they stored somewhere?)
Tks everybody!

iMac 20", Mac OS X (10.6.1)

Posted on Sep 16, 2009 3:50 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Daniel Kovacs

Level 1

79 points

Sep 24, 2009 6:27 PM in response to virtutesiderumtenus

I have been getting this exact behavior. You can recover the note using time machine. Note the date and time the keychain was last modified and then use time machine recover a version of the keychain from before that time. The keychain is located in user/library/keychains.

I don't know why it's happening. The first time it happened to me, I presumed that I had somehow accidentally done a "select all", then accidentally backspaced and then saved without realizing that I had deleted everything. Then when it happened a second and then a third time, I began to believe that something else is going on.

I've been using secure notes like this for well over a year (without this ever happening). The first time it happened was a few weeks ago, but I can't say for sure whether it was before or after upgrading to Snow Leopard. The only other recent change was that a few months ago I copied the content of the secure note out of my login keychain to an different keychain so that it would have a different password.

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Answer 2

Sep 25, 2009 10:05 AM in response to virtutesiderumtenus

Thank u very much!!
I recovered my passwords with Time Machine as You said!
This problem happened to me ( with others minor) just after the SnowLeopard update.
bye and thanks again!

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Answer 3

syl08

Level 1

0 points

Oct 2, 2009 9:20 PM in response to virtutesiderumtenus

I suspect you've encountered symptoms of a real issue with Keychain Access. Seems we're now 4 to have reported similar unexplained keychain note data dissapearance. Please see 'messageID=10339726'. Time Machine recovery is unfortunately not possible when the both the note entry and data loss happen between backups.

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Answer 4

Oct 13, 2009 4:04 PM in response to virtutesiderumtenus

YES! This has happened to me twice already and has been hugely problematic. I can think of few more disastrous functionalities for a bug to affect.

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Answer 5

Oct 22, 2009 2:19 AM in response to viveapple

I also just lost data from a Secure Note. I restored a (renamed) copy of the keychain using Time Machine, but although the note appeared in the newly-imported keychain, the text was still blank. I was able to go back to a still-older version of the file, and this time the data was there. Even though I'm missing some new data from the last three weeks, that's still better than losing everything. Hopefully this doesn't happen again...

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Answer 6

Oct 22, 2009 9:36 AM in response to virtutesiderumtenus

I too have had this problem, three times in the past week. I ran the first aid and it found no problems.

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Answer 7

Oct 23, 2009 12:07 PM in response to virtutesiderumtenus

It happened to me too. Shame. All Secure Notes are intact, except this one. I have like a dozen. No reason I can think of for why this one was corrupted.
I restored it fine using a TM backup of login.keychain as suggested. The usable backup was from after the Snow Leo upgrade, although the modified date of the specific note (inside the restored, working keychain) was from before the upgrade. Don't know what to make of it.

Thanks!

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Answer 8

Oct 27, 2009 4:27 AM in response to virtutesiderumtenus

Yes, me too. Major problem. If I didn't have Time Machine, all my passwords would be gone. I guess it is safer to keep them in a text file on the desktop called "Passwords"!

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Answer 9

Nov 2, 2009 7:25 AM in response to virtutesiderumtenus

Same here. Secure Note content all gone. Has happened multiple times on two Macs now. Very frustrating, and no simple Time Machine integration to recover the note.

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Answer 10

Xoeren

Level 1

4 points

Nov 4, 2009 2:36 AM in response to virtutesiderumtenus

Happening to me too..

This is exactly the kind of thing I would have sworn was impossible on a Mac!

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Answer 11

snkhan

Level 3

677 points

Nov 4, 2009 2:59 AM in response to virtutesiderumtenus

Just out of curiosity, how many items have you stored in the Keychain? I once read that the OSX Keychain wasn't particularly efficient (http://help.agile.ws/1Password/keychain_comparison.html) and that it's prone to getting corrupt, especially when making edits to items.

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Answer 12

Nov 4, 2009 8:33 PM in response to virtutesiderumtenus

same problem just happened to me this morning.
thank you for the solution, i'm glad i have time machine working.
i feel bad for anyone not using time machine.

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Answer 13

Nov 26, 2009 2:13 PM in response to Theodore Kau

Count me in as one of the affected. All Hail Time Machine. But...

Wonderful as it is having a backup is not a "solution" rather a "save".

I've encountered the issue on a few occasions and each time I am at a location from which I cannot access my Time Capsule.

I'm hoping for a fix soon.

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