The protection of the settings is irrelevant for you. You can always check and change anything because you have your FTP program and FTP settings.
The passowrd IN the user settings should NOT be your ftp password, but a different one. It is only there to withold sniffing your settings with programs like PrintSite.php
To see your settings with printSite.php you yourself know what password is inside the usersettings so you can check your uploaded data and your settings with that pw=password
But I can not check your settings or your data without that. No backdoor available.
Wim