Submitted by Google has released a new tool which allows users to synchronize their Cookies, Saved Passwords, Bookmarks, History and tabs from their last session for the Firefox web browser. All of this data is uploaded to Google’s servers continuously (and has the option to be encrypted), and then downloaded every time you launch Firefox on any computer with the extension installed.
Pretty slick but as much as I like Google and would like to trust them, I just don’t like handing out information about my browsing habbits and especially not passwords, encrypted or not.
An excellent idea though for those who are less paranoid then I.
Google is a company that makes money off ads. I can’t imagine why they would offer this service for “free” if they weren’t getting anything out of it. Just think, after doing this every google ad could be personalized to your specific web viewing habits.
Not to mention the security ramifications. I sure hope noone inside or outside google accesses that data maliciously or everyones bank account passwords, 401k logins, etc are theirs for the taking.
This is scary and harmful, even for non-paranoid people.
Maybe. But you can encrypt everything before it even leaves your computer. Maybe they are hoping people won’t… but you paranoia is pretty well unfounded.
So you trust Google to be the keyholder when it’s encrypted? Imagine you rent a storage unit, and you just use the lock the storage company provides. Maybe the owner of the company is a morally upstanding person and won’t go rummaging through your things, but perhaps one of his employees is less scrupulous. Since the company owns the lock on the door, he can very easily find a way into your storage unit and do as he pleases with your belongings. Personally, when I rent a storage unit I make sure it’s one that allows me to place my own lock on the unit. These units usually have a double-lock setup, where the storage company can place an additional lock if you don’t pay your bill, but they can’t otherwise get to your stuff as long as your account is in good standing.
In other words, unless Google is using PGP/GPG encryption or similar and allowing you to use your own keys, the encryption is useless if one of their employees (or the company itself) wants your information.
I’d say his paranoia is very well founded.
The problem is that the plug-in takes over when I start Firefox, so I have to wait until it finishes updating before I can even enter a URL.
Eh. I don’t need it.
If you feel you can trust them (Why not? ATT and the NSA wanna monitor net traffic, social networking stuff is being monitored…not much of what you did online before was private. Guess it depends on if you trust any companies over google.) it’s handy for another purpose:
Dual boots. I’ve always had a bit of trouble going from Linux to Windows and trying to maintain my bookmarks/cookies etc. An annoyance, yes, but one this solves. This would also be nifty in a place like my campus library – If I did, say, some research at home I could stop by a library (In case I wanted to use a tool subscribed to by the school, some database perhaps) I’d still have everything I bookmarked (as well as my history) from when I was working elsewhere.
Not terribly amazing, but I’m a fan
(Hint, posting overly long and rambling messages is rather easy after a night of drinking. Shh!)
This sounds a lot like the old “if you have nothing to hide then what do you have to worry about?” argument.
I’m sure you’re playing devil’s advocate, however this information is what developers have been working tirelessly to keep *private* – not hand over to Google to mine and store indefinitely.
Personally, I wouldn’t touch this thing w/ a 1000 ft. pole. Google makes interesting products but nearly all of them have serious privacy drawbacks.
Much of what you do can be kept private on the internet, if you’re smart. At the rate that governments worldwide are moving to eliminate personal privacy on the internet in the name of “saving the children” – we should all be doing what we can to avoid software like this.
This sounds a lot like the old “if you have nothing to hide then what do you have to worry about?” argument.
I’m sure you’re playing devil’s advocate, however this information is what developers have been working tirelessly to keep *private* – not hand over to Google to mine and store indefinitely.
Personally, I wouldn’t touch this thing w/ a 1000 ft. pole. Google makes interesting products but nearly all of them have serious privacy drawbacks.
Much of what you do can be kept private on the internet, if you’re smart. At the rate that governments worldwide are moving to eliminate personal privacy on the internet in the name of “saving the children” – we should all be doing what we can to avoid software like this.
Then don’t use it? I’ll trade privacy for functionality on certain occasions, and this is one of them. I’m not too terribly concerned that Google has access to my bookmarks (nothing too incriminating, or even exciting) and my passwords for Digg, etc. I never save Bank passwords so I am not too concerned.
“Serious privacy drawbacks?”
Like what? Connected to internet?
If you are connected to internet and posting/sending emails/browsing, forget it. You are already PUBLIC.
I would like to use this ext. for sharing Bookmarks, because it would be killer feature then.
By the way, NO one forbids to create extention for FF to share for example just bookmarks trough XML file on Apache server. or Different way. It is just one solution.
trust my portable ecrypted flash.. OperaUSB (version for USB) do the job right…
I’ve been torn on convenience vs privacy regarding this.
I have 3 machines (mostly Linux, Mac laptop for on the go and Windows for light gaming) and this plugin works great for syncing between all three (got to love Firefox’s cross-platform extension system) but my mind is torn on the privacy implications–Google now has access to my browsing history, my cookies, my bookmarks, my saved passwords (ie: bank logins, Paypal login, OSnews login ;-), etc).
If they compile all this information they can build a hell of an accurate profile of my surfing habits, my interests and even my financial status.
Edited 2006-06-10 21:06
If they where alot more open on how the whole system works, I think more people would be open to it.
More open as in not having to look at source code(client side) to figure out things. We want to know for damm sure your not digging though our cookies/passwords and etc.
I like it, it works well. I have one workstation and 2 laptops, and its become very handy.
(I dont store history and tabs)
it’s most useful for syncing bookmarks, but there are other tools out there to keep bookmarks stored on your own server
http://sourceforge.net/search/?type_of_search=soft&words=bookmark
I’ve been using this for a couple days and have run into some problems. I have a desktop and laptop, both with Firefox installed, with bookmarks and settings mostly synchronized between them.
When Google Sync started working, the first thing it did is to copy the bookmarks of each computer to the other. However, its “conflict resolution” (Google’s term) code was broken, so links that already existed on the target computer in the same location were duplicated – even whole trees of bookmarks were duplicated.
If you try to delete the duplicates, they get deleted on their original computer as well – I had to go back to Firefox’s pre-sync backups to avoid losing whole trees of bookmarks from both computers. At one point, after an long session of recovering from Sync’s mistakes, Google even refused to connect on one of the computers, claiming that too much bandwidth had been used for one day, that I should wait to connect until the next day.
I am finally getting to the point where Sync is settling on one set of bookmarks without throwing them away. I have maybe one more hour of recovery before it is all settled. After that, I’m sure that Google Sync will work just fine.
Can anybody say .MAC?
Neal Saferstein
Can anybody say “crossplatform”?
And, ohh, .MAC is not for free.
I’m now dual booting in my new machine, and I’ve always had trouble keeping things in track. However, now that I’ve figured it out… You can actually share /home with different distros… They will work just fine. The only problem is that things like kde/gnome apps may have difficulty handling version conflicts, and missing apps what have you. Thus, I move and symlink them in the various distros, keeping the .mozilla folder intact and same troughout my setup.
And this system will have for privacy too. Lastly, you can set up a NFS/rsync if you really needed it to be in sync over different computers.
If you really needed to do work away from office/home, you should just email those links back. Privacy is an issue people shouldn’t trample on without caring
I am just going to give in and upload my soul to google.
Encryption should be on by default in this service, just for the benefit of those stupid enough to use it. It’s bad enough that people use public wifi connections and public library computers to check their bank accounts and email, but to offer a service such as this without default encryption is just plain silly. I won’t even check my bank account at work. We have such a paranoid IT department I probably don’t have anything to worry about other than IT themselves keylogging or screencapping me (yes, they do that to everyone), but I don’t trust them any more than they trust me. But, the very idea of giving Google my cookies and stored usernames, encrypted or not, is simply laughable. Add to that my browsing history and bookmarks and now Google has even more insight into which ads to throw at me, all so they can make an extra buck.
No thanks, Google. Find another sucker.