
Multi-account containers add-on sync feature - room505
https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2020/02/06/multi-account-containers-sync/
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wtmt
Sync is a very nice side feature for containers, and helps make the experience
consistent.

Going a little off topic, the current UX for using different containers is
still cumbersome. Not being able to have or assign keyboard shortcuts or other
ways to open tabs in specific containers (not referring to tying domains/sites
to containers) allows for easier mistakes. Container extension extensions like
Temporary Containers help a bit to avoid mixing up usage. I also find the
container colors to be not as prominently visible on the tabs as I’d like.

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smichel17
The colors used to be very prominent. It was ugly, but more usable than the
current dot.

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jclulow
I use this extension, which makes the colouring much more prominent:
[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/container-
col...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/container-color-theme/)

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animalnewbie
Please just start syncing cookies and local storage (on a best effort, maybe
opt-in basis) and I would probably worship Firefox. Also sync non-default
containers

At this point Firefox needs to learn from Ballmer. This isn't the place to
post because this one is good news but in general stop focusing on "cool
stuff" and do what you do best:

1) Provide open alternarive in absence of such.

2) focus on your strengths. this is where the ballmer part comes in. Firefox
is now mostly for power users. Grandmas use chrome now. But after edge nobody
will use anything else. So how about empowering developers and power users to
do cool stuff ? Perhaps (paid and verified?) native add-ons? Maybe only from
trusted partners... Or maybe only if you sideload.

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Teever
Browser sync seems like a really cool feature but the last time I tried to
host my own version of the sync server from Mozilla I found the documentation
to be sparse and the software ultimately non-functional.

Has anyone had any positive experiences with self-hosting the Firefox Sync
Server?

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piotrkubisa
I wrote my very own Firefox Sync Server, completely from scratch, based on
their docs but also based on mozilla-services's Python code and some Firefox
OS codebase. I mostly used Go as a programming language and AWS
Lambda/DynamoDB as a way to store and serve API endpoint.

> [...] I found the documentation to be sparse and the software ultimately
> non-functional.

Yes, my first take on the documentation was the same - existing but hard to
understand in first proof-read. As I implementing my own sync and token server
I really often I was catching myself "hey, you don't have to look into Python
code, they really wrote how it should work in docs", especially [0] and [1]
pages. There are also few other websites owned by Mozilla, which are very
outdated, so also misleading.

Ah, worth noting is about:sync extension [2] and logs stored in the profile
directory, which may help you to investigate some issues that might come
during development and maintenance.

> Has anyone had any positive experiences with self-hosting the Firefox Sync
> Server?

I am biased a bit, because I had one very negative experience related to token
verification error, which costed me ~4 dollars, before I noticed and I had put
service into downtime for some months. However, I am really happy about a
whole project. Operational costa are is about few cents per month. It also
helped me to write some tools I use on daily basis and preserve knowledge I
have learned about serverless applications on AWS.

[0]: [https://mozilla-
services.readthedocs.io/en/latest/storage/ap...](https://mozilla-
services.readthedocs.io/en/latest/storage/apis-1.5.html)

[1]: [https://mozilla.github.io/application-
services/docs/sync/faq...](https://mozilla.github.io/application-
services/docs/sync/faq.html)

[2]:
[https://github.com/mhammond/aboutsync](https://github.com/mhammond/aboutsync)

~~~
drdaeman
Wow. I did the same thing, except that mine was written in Python/Django (and
it was a crude hack) and that I've hosted it on bare metal.

I've used that for 3 years, then I've abandoned it because mainenance was a
pain, and I haven't figured out (despite the code being there in the open!)
how to get iOS app to log in - my JS was missing some magic call and all
Firefox did show is an error message (not the served HTML page).

I've commented a bit about my experiences here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18448125](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18448125)

~~~
piotrkubisa
Yeah, I don't complain on maintenance by now, but I anticipate it might be
problematic as soon as new features comes in. I am looking forward to create a
fork from their Rust[0] backend and include DynamoDB as a storage to keep
compatibility with the latest version of Firefox Sync Server protocol.

[0]: [https://github.com/mozilla-services/syncstorage-
rs](https://github.com/mozilla-services/syncstorage-rs)

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khc
Really cool! I wish I could sync per-container though. I have a "personal"
container at work for personal things, and have configured some websites to
always open in the "personal" container. Syncing that with my personal laptop
seems not very useful (and would actually be annoying)

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asdff
I really wish multi account containers had better support for the back button.
Default behavior for a clicked container-designated link is to open a new
container tab and close the current one.

This little annoyance was enough to make me drop the extension, unfortunately.
I'm not trying to break a 20 year habit over a browser extension.

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hysan
I’ve been giving Firefox a chance over the past two weeks, but one thing that
I haven’t figured out is how to open a new tab in the current container that
I’m in via the keyboard. It’s driving me nuts that I have to use the mouse.
Does anyone know what I’m missing in the settings?

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asamk
You can pass Ctrl+L to focus the address bar, type in the url and then press
Alt+Enter to open a new tab in the same container.

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animalnewbie
Also alt-d

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tyrion
Could someone explain what is the best way, or the intended way, to use
containers?

Because, right now I am using the Personal container for most of the websites
that require login (except Shopping and Banking), and I am not sure if it is
the right thing to do.

I am also blocking by default all third party cookies (and despite FF warning
that it may break sites, I find that everything works fine). So, I am also
wondering if that is enough and makes Containers useless or not.

~~~
piatra1
I think it's important to put as many websites that require login inside
containers (as you already do). Separating them is also a nice plus: Having FB
and some other website B in the same container can give website B knowledge
about your FB identity (through fb like buttons and such). See
[https://robinlinus.github.io/socialmedia-
leak/](https://robinlinus.github.io/socialmedia-leak/) I try not to log in to
any website on my default container. Also keep all the news websites where I
accepted those giant cookie overlays in a "Reading" container.

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felipepater
I have a question... If mozilla automatically blocks third party cookies, can
e-commerces actually track you when you are not on their site? And if so (and
I gues its very possible) how do containers help?

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mcpherrinm
Containers are useful for more than just site isolation.

For example, I use one container for browsing this website, and another for
Reddit.

If I click an Amazon link from reddit, it might be a funny product I want to
look at, but wouldn't consider buying. I don't necessarily want Amazon to know
that.

Or similarly for Google Accounts: I can log into separate accounts for youtube
and gmail, work and personal, etc. Google has some account-switching built-in,
but I find it easier to work this way.

At work, I use multiple AWS accounts, and if I want to look at the AWS
dashboards, containers let me use multiple AWS accounts at once. That's not
something Amazon makes easy otherwise.

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c0nducktr
Somewhat related: If I'm using Nightly as my main browser, is there still a
reason to install the Multi-Account Containers extension?

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nwah1
Multi-Account Containers is a specific way to enhance privacy that, at
present, requires some manual setup of each container.

Sites that rely on authenticating or payment processing with other sites will
not work outside of the established container. For instance, if you try to pay
for something with paypal, but you have a paypal container, then you'll either
have to sign into paypal in both containers, and if you set paypal to always
open in the paypal container then you'll lose whatever session you had in the
other container so you need to pay attention.

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smichel17
My current workaround is to open a private window when I need to do something
like this.

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nwah1
Containers remember your login details, etc. And you can do one for each
company, whereas you can only have one private session open.

So I can seamlessly browse facebook, google, amazon, paypal, my bank, and so
on and feel confident that my cookies and sessions aren't being leaked across
websites. That they aren't tracking my behavior off the site via the browser.

And I don't even consciously need to open a specific type of tab, I can set it
so that it will always load that tab for that site.

And the Facebook Container plugin, in particular, sets everything up for
facebook automatically with regard to any domains owned by facebook.

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8bitsrule
I need a 'Firefox account'? What's that?

'an identity provider that provides authentication and user profile data for
Mozilla cloud services.... give us a pre-existing email address and choose a
password.'

Uh, yeh, no thanks ... been down that road before. (I didn't like cookies
right away either.)

Gorhill lets us backup far more complex settings without signing up for a UO
account.

~~~
wilsonthewhale
You do realize that UBO's backup functionality relies on the browser's native
data syncing functionality (and thus on Firefox Accounts, for Firefox), right?

