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Why is the sync a bad thing?



It's not a bad thing, it's a service that Firefox comes bundled with.


But it was listed as if it was some kind of bloat. Maybe if you only have one computing device, but I find that hard to believe. Why wouldn't you want to sync your bookmarks, extensions and settings between your devices?


No, I have thousands on my desktop, and none on my movie tablet and prefer it to stay that way.

Not to mention I use safari on the iphone. I don't want work or personal mixed either.

Even if did want some of these, companies are not trustworthy any longer.


What are you putting your trust into? A set of links and list of extensions. If you use the browser to visit these links and use the extensions then they already have all that info about you.

As for mixing work and personal. You can setup multiple accounts and switch between them. And I don't see what the amount of bookmarks has to do with anything, it just brings up relative things faster if you have them bookmarked.

Feels almost like you are just trying to come up with reasons to dismiss useful feature.


No, they don't have info about me, at least that part. That's the point.

I don't need to switch between accounts, but screens, my client work is on a separate laptop.

Try navigating even hundreds of objects on a mobile device, it's not practical. Most of the stuff is not needed there either, for example (at random) I never use stack-exchange from a mobile device.


>I don't need to switch between accounts, but screens, my client work is on a separate laptop.

yeah, so it is not for you.

> No, they don't have info about me, at least that part. That's the point.

is that really THE point? If so can you please clarify why.


From a user standpoint, information should be given out on a need-to-know basis. We're in a post-storage-scarcity world, after 2005 or so. Data is collected for everything and no longer deleted if it has any value.

The fact that organizations are starving for data means they will correlate and profile on anything they are allowed to gather. Once gathered, never deleted, bought and sold. More ethical employees replaced as needed.

You're in a librewolf thread, maybe wondering why it exists? For a primer I recommend the Frontline doc, "The United States of Secrets." It is on Kanopy, maybe PBS app for free. Worth paying for. Their more recent Facebook doc was interesting as well.

In themselves, bookmarks are not important. But they'd be pretty valuable (combined with other things) to use as an input to an advertising algorithm, no?


What information does Mozilla gain from storing your bookmarks they can not get by you using their browser?

This reads like some conspiracytheory B.S.


They don't monitor your everyday traffic, so it is a huge number of additional data points for profiling. Everything in those documentaries were considered conspiracy… until they were proven correct.

To anyone that is reading, I also recommend the "Social Dilemma" on Netflix, although it comes in from a slightly different angle, encouraging addiction that feeds back into this one.


Not the OP but two reasons for that.

One is that Mozilla broke all the extensions on Android except a few ones so there are very few extensions that I can sync from Ubuntu to Android. And I only have a laptop plus a number of phones and tablets.

Two, I don't sync my data through somebody's else servers. I fancied to setup my sync server but that would be limited to Firefox. Instead I use KDEConnect and GSConnect to send tabs and files across devices (and Syncthing too.) I don't bookmark much. I pin a few sites to the new tab page.


Syncthing ...

Do you use it in some way to sync browser stuff?

This is the feature I'm desperately wanting from apps and desktop applications (like browser): let me sync between desktop and mobile by syncing small state/settings files (of the apps) via syncthing.


floccus seems like a good solution for bookmarks if you or anyone else is interested. to sync things you can use either a webdav server, nextcloud instance or even just a local syncthing folder in conjunction with small desktop utility that floccus makes.


Yep, I've been thinking to setup a nextcloud server or something like that for years but I already solved almost all my needs by using those apps and local services. The gain is very marginal.


>I don't sync my data through somebody's else servers.

That seems like schizo blanket statement. Now instead of using built in, tested solution, you spend time setting up and maintaining custom solution and for what gain?


There is little to setup. I install the KDEConnect app on my Android devices and the GSConnect Gnome extension on my laptop. Then it works by sharing to the other devices much like I'd share to WhatsApp or Telegram. There is the added benefit that my laptop's audio is silenced when I get a call on my phone and I can use any of those devices to stop and resume media on the others.

I gain that it's not Mozilla's or anybody's else business to deal with my links. Everything stays inside my devices.


| Why wouldn't you want to sync your bookmarks, extensions and settings between your devices?

Because you're afraid they'll get hacked.


Mozzilla? OK. Let's play this out. Mozzilla gets hacked and now they have all of your bookmarks. What are they gonna do with that? What is at stake? Only thing I can think about is if you have some taboo erotica bookmarked. Do you have actual examples?


Put you on a list. What if Mozilla gets hacked by Russia for instance? They could use that data to profile partisans in Ukraine. Just one teeny tiny example. You can think of many real life risks when other people have your data.


So Russia hacks Mozilla and gets list of your bookmarks... And then what? They know what sites you visit often and what can they do with that information?

I feel like you felt this was some kind of slamdunk gotcha, but I really can't see what you are trying to say. As if Ukrainian combattans have some special bookmarks that reveal some military secrects.

>You can think of many real life risks when other people have your data.

Yet you can't name one




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