Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Is Microsoft Stealing People’s Bookmarks?

schneier.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 84 posts

Re: Is Microsoft Stealing People’s Bookmarks?

#61

Post by discardedrefuse »

foobarbaz33 wrote: post #28

More firm than ever in my decision to store bookmarks in a simple, grep-able text file.

I switched to xBrowserSync a while back and its been a game changer. Your bookmarks are encrypted on the client before uploading and you can self-host your own server if you want. My bookmarks now live independently from my browser. Between that and BitWarden for passwords, I am no longer tied to any browser on any device. Its so easy to browser hop now. Also...turns out keeping scores of folders, inside folders, inside more folders is a terrible way to organize bookmarks; Tags w/ search is the way to go!

Re: Is Microsoft Stealing People’s Bookmarks?

#62

Post by rolph »

lrem wrote: post #57
rolph wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if they do scrape all the links in skype conversations, i have an idea that would keep them very busy, such as a bot that has extensive skype discussions about links

You would be neither the first nor the last with an idea how to DOS Microsoft. Being the receiving end of ideas like that is bread and butter for any of the tech megacorps.

i woudnt exactly say its a DOS, it would be an ^ample^ collection of URLs provided to any skype user that requested it. If somescript scrapes every instance of that list everytime it shows up in a conversation, there had better be a limit to the bandwidth expended

Re: Is Microsoft Stealing People’s Bookmarks?

#64

Post by lswank »

bloopernova wrote: post #41
foobarbaz33 wrote: post #28

More firm than ever in my decision to store bookmarks in a simple, grep-able text file.

I like Firefox's bookmarks. You can add tags to each bookmark, which can make sorting and finding them much easier. I also use a default bookmark folder, so all new bookmarks just go into that one folder, with the most recent at the top of the folder. That means I'm relying more on the position, tags, and naming to find a bookmark, rather than a position in a hierarchy. I keep meaning to research how to extract/sync…

I didn't know this before, but wow, now I really like Firefox's bookmarks. I feel like there's a lot of unexplored personal value to one's bookmarks and history. Thank you for your comment.

I've been using Firefox for years, but I've never paid attention too this before. I just tested this and yeah . . . I am going to be using this a lot.

This comment was generated by GPT-3 because somehow signing up for the sandbox and telling it to rewrite my comment was more fulfilling than just typing a comment. I tried to get it to give you a generic thanks with specifics of how I would use this . . . but GPT-3 kinda sucks for this. Oh, well.

Re: Is Microsoft Stealing People’s Bookmarks?

#66

Post by paulryanrogers »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #6

Happened to me about a week ago. When I opened the browser, a notification popped up telling me "Your bookmarks are now being synced". There was an option to turn this off, which I did, but I have to assume that the bookmarks were already sent off to Microsoft. There's nothing remarkable in my bookmarks. I've never really found it to be a useful tool beyond a way of marking things I want to check out again soon. I do…

Firefox doesn't sync by default. And they don't appear to be promoting me to do it on new installs.

Re: Is Microsoft Stealing People’s Bookmarks?

#68

Post by CogitoCogito »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #66
Mountain_Skies wrote: post #6

Happened to me about a week ago. When I opened the browser, a notification popped up telling me "Your bookmarks are now being synced". There was an option to turn this off, which I did, but I have to assume that the bookmarks were already sent off to Microsoft. There's nothing remarkable in my bookmarks. I've never really found it to be a useful tool beyond a way of marking things I want to check out again soon. I do…

Firefox doesn't sync by default. And they don't appear to be promoting me to do it on new installs.

Doesn't Firefox sync send off the data encrypted with your password (unknown to them) anyway? This is my understanding. I don't think Firefox can make use of the bookmarks synced to them at all.

Re: Is Microsoft Stealing People’s Bookmarks?

#69

Post by paulryanrogers »

CogitoCogito wrote: post #68
paulryanrogers wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox doesn't sync by default. And they don't appear to be promoting me to do it on new installs.

Doesn't Firefox sync send off the data encrypted with your password (unknown to them) anyway? This is my understanding. I don't think Firefox can make use of the bookmarks synced to them at all.

I believe that's how Weave worked. The newer Firefox Sync included (still includes?) sharing capabilities that call that into question.

Re: Is Microsoft Stealing People’s Bookmarks?

#70

Post by CogitoCogito »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #69
CogitoCogito wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't Firefox sync send off the data encrypted with your password (unknown to them) anyway? This is my understanding. I don't think Firefox can make use of the bookmarks synced to them at all.

I believe that's how Weave worked. The newer Firefox Sync included (still includes?) sharing capabilities that call that into question.

> I believe that's how Weave worked. The newer Firefox Sync included (still includes?) sharing capabilities that call that into question.

A quick search online makes it seem like Mozilla still has no ability to read what you sync. E.g. from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_Sync you see:

> It keeps user data on Mozilla servers, but according to Mozilla the data is encrypted in such a way that no third party, not even Mozilla, can access user information. It is also possible for the user to host their own Firefox Sync servers, or indeed, for any entity to do so.

I can't find independent verifications, but I would trust Mozilla about this at this point. But I'm not sure what sharing capabilities you refer to so I can't really speak to that.

Post reply on HN