Disturbing if true, as it suggests my "everything" backups aren't really full backups at all.
I wonder, if you have enabled iCloud keychain, does that provide another way to get your passwords back?
Suppose my MacBook is stolen, but I still have my iPhone. Could I use the passwords app on the iPhone to retrieve my passwords. Would that include all of them or only a subset?
The iCloud keychain is separate from the login keychain. The Passwords app doesn't use the login keychain.
You don't have any backups at all if you never tried restoring and testing them