displaying secret key in the clear. why ever do this?

Former Member Already know about that and while a good guess, only slightly correct. :) I get why the key was plaintext on disk years ago. Not as much with a product that requires the user present to use - i.e., you don't really need to fill in a password when you're not there to login, right? But it was kind of required with products like cloud-backup apps that continually run in the background. But, the file can certainly be protected by, oh the account password that you need to unlock and use the product. Or nowadays, with a per-machine key to make the file a per-device secret so moving the file or data wouldn't work off the box. I'm not a Windows guy, but an example of this tech worth looking into is the PowerShell.SecretManagement and .SecretStore modules that some client use to automate scriptings. Or, sidestep the whole unencrypted disk as rest storage issue with FDE and get with the naughts. :)

But this is a separate issue and out of scope to my OP, which is visually revealing the secret key in some places but not all of them. But it reinforces the reasoning why my statement is correct - they're protecting the salt in some places but not all. Which is weird why you would protect it in the more obscure places but leave it unprotected in the most obvious and probably most seen place - a login screen.