[Asbostos]

There's the argument that if someone has access to the passwords then they've already got enough control over the computer to do whatever other damage they like - like reading them out of memory after they're decrypted.

Base64 at least provides some protection against somebody looking at it with their eyes and memorizing them, which is perhaps a more likely scenario - family members, kids, etc.

[redbeard0x0a]

Base64 provides no protection from malware that infects your machine and actively looks for this kind of stuff. Stored passwords from websites, ftp programs, key safes, etc.