The answer to “what is Firefox?” on Mozilla’s FAQ page about its browser used to read:
The Firefox Browser is the only major browser backed by a not-for-profit that doesn’t sell your personal data to advertisers while helping you protect your personal information.
Now it just says:
The Firefox Browser, the only major browser backed by a not-for-profit, helps you protect your personal information.
In other words, Mozilla is no longer willing to commit to not selling your personal data to advertisers.
A related change was also highlighted by mozilla.org commenter jkaelin, who linked direct to the source code for that FAQ page. To answer the question, “is Firefox free?” Moz used to say:
Yep! The Firefox Browser is free. Super free, actually. No hidden costs or anything. You don’t pay anything to use it, and we don’t sell your personal data.
Now it simply reads:
Yep! The Firefox Browser is free. Super free, actually. No hidden costs or anything. You don’t pay anything to use it.
Again, a pledge to not sell people’s data has disappeared. Varma insisted this is the result of the fluid definition of “sell” in the context of data sharing and privacy.
Given that this is a privacy community, I would think that it would go without saying, But I just like to point out, We should probably disable Firefox sync if were using it. Log out of Firefox accounts in the browser. Even if you’re not giving them telemetry they have all that data.
You can use the x bookmarks sync plugin, Don’t make an account with them just use the un-logged in plugin to backup and restore your bookmarks between browsers. On the upside it’ll even let you copy bookmarks from Firefox derivatives to Chrome derivatives.Go down a comment or two and use Floccus, Just converted it’s wonderful
Hey, just wanted to point out that xbrowsersync hasn’t seen updates for quite some time. I would suggest folks to read this discussion and to perhaps check out Floccus as an alternative.
Both Floccus and xBrowserSync have Android apps on the F-droid app store as well.
That’s fair, nice that they support self cloud store
Alternative to FF Sync?
I Iove this shit. Send to devices, multiple devices, bookmarks, passwords…
For sending things to devices I use KDE Connect. I realize it is a fundamentally different application, but it is what I use generally to send / receive links between devices, as well as documents, images etc. It also is good for notification mirroring, and really just integrating Android devices into Windows / Linux computers.
For passwords I used KeePass (and I sync them between devices with SyncThing), but I usually recommend Bitwarden (which is what I used to use). Both are open source, have apps for all platforms, can integrate into your browser if you choose. The main advantage of Bitwarden is that it is open source, all necessary features are free, and you can host the server yourself if you want. It also integrates into some services, notably email aliasing ones, to allow you to generate new emails every time you make a new account.
For bookmarks / history your best bet is the extension everyone else is recommending here!
I wish kde connect was usable for me.
Whatever brand of magic it just finds your device works horribly on my corporate and home network. If I give it a static IP which is only supported in some operating systems, it’s able to find it but then when I change locations it’s totally wrong and refuses to connect.
I’m not surprised by the corporate network, it’s pretty common for those types of networks to severely block inter-device LAN communication. There are two solutions however, for one, KDEconnect has initial Bluetooth support. I think it only support Plasma and Android as of now, and could be documented better, but it does avoid the LAN access problems. The other solution is using a VPN, the easiest off the shelf solution being Tailscale, but I feel this is only worth it if you have multiple use cases for it (I use it for faster Syncthing transfers, Moonlight / Sunshine game streaming. And KDEconnect)
I really wish KDEConnect “just worked”, similar to how Apple’s devices connect to one another, but I guess this is the price you pay sometimes for an open source cross platform solution.
My home and corporate networks are both set up with igmp snooping.
Problem with using tailscale is that if I’m at work, both my desktop and phone would have to be tailscaled home to connect which is not ideal.
When I’m at home I need my phone to connect to my home desktop, when I’m at work I need my phone to connect to my work desktop.
If they supported a list of static IP addresses that would work
If they allowed DNS names as the targets that would work.
If they could add IGMP multicast to their search capabilities that would work. IGMP is the option to be allowed to forward across networks.
Bluetooth could work
They could use MQTT or NTFY
It’s probably about a billion ways to skin this. They basically just need some form of communication without knowing the exact target or being able to specify the target dynamically. I give it a shot every year or so get it to connect a couple of times and then eventually give up.
Xbrowsersync for bookmark syncing. Works across browsers. A real password Manager, like Bitwarden, for passwords.
I think the killer feature of ff sync is being able to see open tabs on other devices. Is there any other way to achieve that?
https://github.com/mozilla-services/syncstorage-rs
You can!
Oooh that’s tasty, guess I’ll be adding that to my Configs soon.
Hmm not sure. It’s not something I’ve ever used. Maybe theres something for that.
Though I seem to remember one could host their own sync server?
You can self host firefox sync.
At the moment that would be an option, we’d need somebody to watch the code and make sure they don’t change and send your crap home anyway in an update.