I think I found a bug in 1.9.4. I entered my master public key on a separate internet connected computer to create a watching only wallet, but if I right click on a public address, I can see the address's private key and it did not ask me for my password. It may be nothing, but I would definitely NOT share your MPK until this is clarified. I have transferred all my funds out of electrum for the time being.
Does this happen to anyone else?
I entered my master public key on a separate internet connected computer to create a watching only wallet, but if I right click on a public address and click on "private key", I can see the address's private key without it asking me for my password. Am I wrong or is this in effect no different than having an unencrypted wallet? If someone could hack into my computer, they could see the private keys for all my addresses. Until this is clarified, I have transferred all my funds out of electrum wallets for the time being (though electrum is otherwise great).
Does this happen to anyone else?
I guess you are talking about the wallet that has your seed (not the watching-only wallet), and that you forgot to encrypt it.
just add a password..
or maybe you selected 'restore from seed' and typed your master public key there
Nope. It is my watching-only wallet on a computer that has never had a hot wallet on it. I even erased the watching only wallet, reentered my MPK and it still happens. However, I compared the private keys shown on the watching-only wallet to the cold storage wallet the private keys are different. Could a dev or someone explain what is going on? Does this mean I am okay?
you definitely selected 'restore from seed' instead of 'restore from master public key', and typed your master public key there
No I definitely didn't either time, both times it said "watching only wallet" after it was created, and I can only create unsigned transactions. Let's just take my word for it that I entered it in the correct place, what should be happening when I click on private key? I'm on OSX Mavericks if that is of any help.
I'm on Mavericks and I can't reproduce what you are seeing. I've created a fresh wallet, then restore from its MPK and it doesn't appear to have the private key option as expected.
Then restore using the MPK entering it in the seed section and got a different set of a addresses, that obviously carries privkeys.