Suddenly Lost all my saved passwords from brave but did nothing

Description of the issue:
Suddenly all of my saved passwords and login sessions disappeared from Brave, but everything else is still intact — including browsing history, bookmarks, Brave stats (ads/trackers blocked, bandwidth saved), and settings. Brave asked me to log in again to Gmail, and I realized all login info was wiped.

How can this issue be reproduced?
Not exactly sure how to reproduce, but here’s what happened:

  1. Opened Brave as usual.
  2. Tried to visit Gmail — it asked for login credentials.
  3. Checked brave://password-manager/passwords and saw that all saved passwords were missing.

Expected result:
Brave should retain my saved passwords and login sessions. I didn’t perform any reset, clear data, or switch profiles.

Brave Version:
Brave 1.80.120 Chromium: 138.0.7204.101 (Official Build) (64-bit)

Operating System:
Windows 11 Version 22H2 (Build 22621.3155)

Additional Information:

  • Profile path shown in brave://version:
    C:\Users\RAVIDU\AppData\Local\BraveSoftware\Brave-Browser\User Data\Default
  • Inside that folder, I still see the following files:
    • Login Data
    • Login Data for Account
    • Login Data For Account-journal
    • Login Data-journal
  • My browsing history and Brave stats are still visible — only passwords and login sessions are missing.
  • I did not enable Brave Sync and have never exported my passwords.
  • No manual reset or profile switch has been done.
  • I did run an Avira antivirus scan and clicked “Resolve” recently — but I’ve done that many times before without losing any data.
  • No cleanup tools like CCleaner were used.

Can someone help me recover the saved passwords from these files? Is there a safe way to restore or decrypt them? Any help would be really appreciated. Thanks in advance!

@raviduranal

Important routines for users of Brave Passwords Management:

  • make export of passwords to CSV file
  • make backup of Brave user data

Study the following, beginning with:

https://support.brave.app/hc/en-us/articles/29808985123085-Sensitive-data-storage