9 ms·

Is Microsoft Stealing People’s Bookmarks?

202 points by thg 5y ago

siproprio 5y ago
Hint hint hint: this is not about bookmarks, it's about privacy and respecting user's choice. It happened to me too. And then they used this data to show me creepy ads.
itronitron 5y ago
Anyone know if this sort of thing happens with enterprise users of Microsoft? Exfiltrating user data would create a shitstorm at one of my previous employers.
- lostlogin 5y ago
  I wonder what Microsoft would think of all their employee bookmarks being uploaded?
- msla 5y ago
  If Microsoft said it didn't happen, why would anyone believe them?
  - pc86 5y ago
    Considering fraud is a crime, yes.
    - thg 5y ago
      Nobody would go to prison over this. At most it'd be a fine and if the value gained is bigger than the fine they estimate they'll have to pay, they sure as hell would take that chance. Happens all the time. Even more so, since it's literally something (most) MBAs are being taught.
johmue 5y ago
the big companies need to go away don't they?
- tiborsaas 5y ago
  To a country where they can continue doing the same thing?
- azinman2 5y ago
  Because the Microsoft date sync it’s web browser you want to wipe out trillions in value to the US economy, projects that could never be done outside of a large company filled with the best aligned talent (custom chips, google search), and hand it over to the next willing coordinated massive player with entirely different values and regulatory laws (China)? I think this is a very silly idea that would be super destructive and net negative for the world.
  - reaperducer 5y ago
    I think it is a very silly idea to think that breaking up big companies would wipe out trillions in value to the US economy. The whole reason there are anti-competition laws is because many smaller companies are better for an economy than one large company.
    - remolacha 5y ago
      Those anti-competition laws are only applicable when a company is using market dominance to exclude new entrants, distorting the free market. Not true in this case. Lots of small companies are not inherently economically better than big firms. It totally depends on the maturity of the market in question. Large firms gain economies of scale, and can pursue opportunities with large upfront capital requirements.
      - reaperducer 5y ago
        The point wasn't about the competition. The point is that many small companies are better for an economy than a single large company. Let me give you one small example: MediumCo and SmallCo each need 50 stenographers to get the office work done. When the two merge into MegaConHugeCo, it only needs 60 stenographers to get the office work done. "Economies of scale" are great for the giant new company, but throw 40 people into unemployment. That is bad for an economy. Multiply that by all of the functions of a company, and you understand why the federal government and politicians put so much attention and resources into helping small and medium businesses.
hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
If true, I don't understand how this is surprising. Google has been using all possible tactics to convince users to give them ("sync") all their data, including bookmarks and passwords. So from the point of view of Nadella, why should MS be any different?
- iamstupidsimple 5y ago
  It's possible to be OK sharing information with one company but but not another? Especially when MS has a large history of security f'ups.
- kps 5y ago
  Chrome lets you locally encrypt sync'd data with a password.
- Mikeb85 5y ago
  Google has been far more trustworthy. Is there any evidence they do anything with your data except match it to ads via algorithm? I've had Hotmail accounts hacked back in the day, never happened with Gmail. MS is insidious in trying to keep squeezing more from you and automatically adding your account to everything. Google just gives me useful stuff, and even takes away all ads on the products I've paid for. With MS there's still ads in paid products.
vadfa 5y ago
One more reason not to log in using your Microsoft account at all.
- marginalia_nu 5y ago
  Sucks that Windows forcibly pairs your local account and Microsoft account every once in a while with no opt-out.
  - beckingz 5y ago
    This nearly bricked one of my laptops because it changed the local password login to use the microsoft account.
  - AnthonyMouse 5y ago
    There is a solution to this even if you're on Windows, isn't there? Never create a Microsoft account. At all. At least until they stop allowing that for products you're already using, which will probably be tomorrow, if it hasn't already happened.
    - marginalia_nu 5y ago
      > At least until they stop allowing that for products you're already using, which will probably be tomorrow, if it hasn't already happened. I've been forced to enter a Microsoft account to log in to my computer after an update. No thought toward the possibility that I may need to use the computer I'm in front of to reset the password to that account. No Microsoft account, no getting past that screen. I had to boot into Linux to reset my microsoft account so I could log into windows. I don't even.
- kop316 5y ago
  Microsoft makes this extremely difficult, even for an offline account. If you log into any Microsoft product (Office, Teams, Skype OneDrive, etc), Windows forces you to log into everything else. This is especially infuriating with Office, as they make it extremely difficult to get a standalone product, they very aggressively push Office 364, so you are forced to log into Office to even use it.
1cvmask 5y ago
From the article: Has this happened to anyone else, or was this user error of some sort? If this is real, can some reporter write about it? (Not that “user error” is a good justification. Any system where making a simple mistake means that you’ve forever lost your privacy isn’t a good one. We see this same situation with sharing contact lists with apps on smartphones. Apps will repeatedly ask, and only need you to accidentally click “okay” once.) EDITED TO ADD: It’s actually worse than I thought. Edge urges users to store passwords, ID numbers, and even passport numbers, all of which get uploaded to Microsoft by default when synch is enabled. - But Microsoft at their build conference said they are a woke corporation: https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1456344147103653889 https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1456344147103653889 Or maybe the performative art of being a woke altruistic corporation is the subterfuge for being evil.
- mgh2 5y ago
  All companies play politics to gain customer's hearts and minds ($$$). All FAANGs play this game masterfully.
  - cyberge99 5y ago
    Google’s slogan was once: “Do no evil”
    - actually_a_dog 5y ago
      No, it was "don' be evil." You can do a lot of evil and still not be evil if you adopt a utilitarian position and claim that the good you've done outweighs it.
- jadbox 5y ago
  Is it at least end to end encrypted?
- SahAssar 5y ago
  Why does the presenters describe their appearance and clothes? Is that supposed to be some sort of accessibility thing (for blind people)? If so, how does it help blind people to know that someones top is sleeveless and that they have dark hair?
Mountain_Skies 5y ago
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 don't use it for day to day links. I do recall going through this with Chrome and Firefox in the past when they pushed syncing as a huge wonderful benefit for me and I had no interest at all. I'm sure some people have bookmarks as part of their personal workflow and are grateful to have this syncing ability for multiple devices. That's great for them but all vendors need a very strick opt-in policy, not a "we're so sure you're going to love this that we turned it on for you" scheme.
- paulryanrogers 5y ago
  Firefox doesn't sync by default. And they don't appear to be promoting me to do it on new installs.
  - CogitoCogito 5y ago
    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.
    - paulryanrogers 5y ago
      I believe that's how Weave worked. The newer Firefox Sync included (still includes?) sharing capabilities that call that into question.
      - CogitoCogito 5y ago
        > 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 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.
silverpepsi 5y ago
Seems a bit late to make hoopla about a much more minor infraction. With Onedrive I'm facing the nightmare that you are not allowed to configure it until syncing is in progress. If you pause syncing immediately on install, you're not allowed to change settings to prevent said syncing from happening. I have a mix of personal and business data on there. This has been the case for a few years now but recently got worse. Basically, I don't want my hard drive contaminated with this data when going through customs, that's why I am traveling with a FRESHLY FORMATTED AND REINSTALLED laptop. And what does MS do? Coerce me into all this data's metadata touching down on a drive I have no intention of ever letting touch it. Makes my blood boil. It's a well documented fact these idiots in customs will infringe your privacy for shits and giggles and harass you about stuff that has nothing to do with any valid legal concern. Thanks Microsoft.
- tata71 5y ago
  > Be HN commenter > Try to avoid own data being on machine > Log into Microsoft cloud account > ???
  - iamstupidsimple 5y ago
    I mean, Windows shouldn't be this user-hostile in the first place. Most of it is literally not designed for "HN commenters".
- seized 5y ago
  This isn't really a product issue. Separate your data properly, uninstall or disable the OneDrive client and use the web version if you need something, use a different product.... Not everything has to bend to your "unique" needs. And it's hard to take your complaint or needs seriously when it starts out with mixing personal and business data.
  - silverpepsi 5y ago
    But here's the thing, they literally provide checkboxes for individual directories you want to sync. They've literally designed it to my needs (actually I was trying to simplify, the reality is I don't mix business but personal grades of porn to varying grades of legality, so do you seriously expect me to have multiple personal Office256 accounts for categories of porn????) It's just their default settings went from years of causing data corruption as soon as you try to change the default of everything checked to this new cluster of ghost syncing.
mobilemidget 5y ago
I believe they scrape all links pasted in Skype conversations too
- _trampeltier 5y ago
  Everybody scrape all links. Mostly for the preview function. Just s3nd a unique url with some messengers or mail and look at the serverlogs. Thats also a reason to use even a simple login.
  - donmcronald 5y ago
    Yep. My email client has message tracking built in and I forgot to disable it after a re-install once. A lot of messages are "read" immediately. I've always been curious how promotional mailers handle that.
- rolph 5y ago
  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
  - lrem 5y ago
    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.
    - rolph 5y ago
      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
- tata71 5y ago
  and all filenames in the OS.
foobarbaz33 5y ago
More firm than ever in my decision to store bookmarks in a simple, grep-able text file.
- bloopernova 5y ago
  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 from the SQLite database that Firefox uses for bookmarks. I feel like there's a lot of unexplored personal value to one's bookmarks and history.
  - dandanua 5y ago
    Firefox bookmarks tagging is a killer feature for me. I even bookmark some local files through it. Too bad it doesn't work on mobile.
    - bloopernova 5y ago
      What I'd like to be able to do is unify the tags between Firefox and my Emacs org-roam/org-mode data. I think it could be useful to be able to see a view of which bookmarks have the same tags as the document I'm viewing, and vice-versa. Plus a timeline of tags/bookmarks/documents/pages could further bring to light some relationships between information. For instance, "around the time I was writing lots of stuff about AWS IAM roles, I bookmarked these pages, read these sites, browsed these tags". It's only a half-formed idea and unfortunately it'd require both lots of Emacs elisp work and an extension in Firefox.
      - gbrindisi 5y ago
        I wanted to do the same, and in the end gave up in favour of a simpler approach: I drop the bookmarks in my notes, I can tag as I please, less moving parts and it's easier to search. But I would still like to see someone figuring this out!
Borrible 5y ago
Of course they don't steal anything from you. They just preserve your precious little soul. To your best interest. Which may coincidentially be in their best interest. A friendly customer service, because you happen to honour them using their products. And, if you're lucky, even in the best interest of people that do protect you against evil forces out there in the dark. From time to time they may look into your precious little soul lying down on the ocean ground in an underwater Microsoft data center, to see if all is well with you. Think about it, sometimes you yourself don't know you're part of those forces, but Microsoft and those other people might know. And they can help you. They are like shepherds to their flock. Some may call it customer profiling, customer-retention or even vendor lock-in, mass surveillance and other ugly terms, but I tell you it is love. Yes, pure caring and love. You may not understand that at first. Like Apple had to learn bitterly recently. But I tell you, in the end, with their help, there will be just shiny happy people around you. Amen.
- anon9001 5y ago
  Developers! Developers! Developers!
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago
  Where do "we" want to go today?
- 3np 5y ago
  You have won the victory over yourself.
  - Borrible 5y ago
    Well, Winston, the party would love to know how many out there don't realize that it's satire. That's fine for the party, because the others don't realize it's not.
sharken 5y ago
One of the comments on that link has offered this URL where Force Sync is mentioned. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/deployedge/microsoft-edge-policies https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/deployedge/microsoft-edge-p... To me it's absolutely mind boggling the amount of text in that link. There are nearly 100.000 words, which is the same as: A 100,000 word count will create about 200 pages single-spaced or 400 pages double-spaced when using normal margins (1″) and 12 pt. Arial or Times New Roman font. Reference https://capitalizemytitle.com/page-count/100000-words/ https://capitalizemytitle.com/page-count/100000-words/
- siproprio 5y ago
  That page is so awful it crashed on my machine.
hbarka 5y ago
I’m lamenting Google’s decision to stop supporting Google Bookmarks. It was my personal search archive, simple and in the cloud.
ddtaylor 5y ago
My Windows system is used only for gaming and I have a strict rule that it cannot log into anything but gaming related content like Steam etc. No actual accounts or credentials ever go into that system.

202 points by thg 5y ago

Hint hint hint: this is not about bookmarks, it's about privacy and respecting user's choice. It happened to me too. And then they used this data to show me creepy ads.

itronitron 5y ago

Anyone know if this sort of thing happens with enterprise users of Microsoft? Exfiltrating user data would create a shitstorm at one of my previous employers.

lostlogin 5y ago
I wonder what Microsoft would think of all their employee bookmarks being uploaded?
msla 5y ago
If Microsoft said it didn't happen, why would anyone believe them?
- pc86 5y ago
  Considering fraud is a crime, yes.
  - thg 5y ago
    Nobody would go to prison over this. At most it'd be a fine and if the value gained is bigger than the fine they estimate they'll have to pay, they sure as hell would take that chance. Happens all the time. Even more so, since it's literally something (most) MBAs are being taught.

johmue 5y ago

the big companies need to go away don't they?

tiborsaas 5y ago
To a country where they can continue doing the same thing?
azinman2 5y ago
Because the Microsoft date sync it’s web browser you want to wipe out trillions in value to the US economy, projects that could never be done outside of a large company filled with the best aligned talent (custom chips, google search), and hand it over to the next willing coordinated massive player with entirely different values and regulatory laws (China)? I think this is a very silly idea that would be super destructive and net negative for the world.
- reaperducer 5y ago
  I think it is a very silly idea to think that breaking up big companies would wipe out trillions in value to the US economy. The whole reason there are anti-competition laws is because many smaller companies are better for an economy than one large company.
  - remolacha 5y ago
    Those anti-competition laws are only applicable when a company is using market dominance to exclude new entrants, distorting the free market. Not true in this case. Lots of small companies are not inherently economically better than big firms. It totally depends on the maturity of the market in question. Large firms gain economies of scale, and can pursue opportunities with large upfront capital requirements.
    - reaperducer 5y ago
      The point wasn't about the competition. The point is that many small companies are better for an economy than a single large company. Let me give you one small example: MediumCo and SmallCo each need 50 stenographers to get the office work done. When the two merge into MegaConHugeCo, it only needs 60 stenographers to get the office work done. "Economies of scale" are great for the giant new company, but throw 40 people into unemployment. That is bad for an economy. Multiply that by all of the functions of a company, and you understand why the federal government and politicians put so much attention and resources into helping small and medium businesses.

hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago

If true, I don't understand how this is surprising. Google has been using all possible tactics to convince users to give them ("sync") all their data, including bookmarks and passwords. So from the point of view of Nadella, why should MS be any different?

iamstupidsimple 5y ago
It's possible to be OK sharing information with one company but but not another? Especially when MS has a large history of security f'ups.
kps 5y ago
Chrome lets you locally encrypt sync'd data with a password.
Mikeb85 5y ago
Google has been far more trustworthy. Is there any evidence they do anything with your data except match it to ads via algorithm? I've had Hotmail accounts hacked back in the day, never happened with Gmail. MS is insidious in trying to keep squeezing more from you and automatically adding your account to everything. Google just gives me useful stuff, and even takes away all ads on the products I've paid for. With MS there's still ads in paid products.

vadfa 5y ago

One more reason not to log in using your Microsoft account at all.

marginalia_nu 5y ago
Sucks that Windows forcibly pairs your local account and Microsoft account every once in a while with no opt-out.
- beckingz 5y ago
  This nearly bricked one of my laptops because it changed the local password login to use the microsoft account.
- AnthonyMouse 5y ago
  There is a solution to this even if you're on Windows, isn't there? Never create a Microsoft account. At all. At least until they stop allowing that for products you're already using, which will probably be tomorrow, if it hasn't already happened.
  - marginalia_nu 5y ago
    > At least until they stop allowing that for products you're already using, which will probably be tomorrow, if it hasn't already happened. I've been forced to enter a Microsoft account to log in to my computer after an update. No thought toward the possibility that I may need to use the computer I'm in front of to reset the password to that account. No Microsoft account, no getting past that screen. I had to boot into Linux to reset my microsoft account so I could log into windows. I don't even.
kop316 5y ago
Microsoft makes this extremely difficult, even for an offline account. If you log into any Microsoft product (Office, Teams, Skype OneDrive, etc), Windows forces you to log into everything else. This is especially infuriating with Office, as they make it extremely difficult to get a standalone product, they very aggressively push Office 364, so you are forced to log into Office to even use it.

1cvmask 5y ago

From the article: Has this happened to anyone else, or was this user error of some sort? If this is real, can some reporter write about it? (Not that “user error” is a good justification. Any system where making a simple mistake means that you’ve forever lost your privacy isn’t a good one. We see this same situation with sharing contact lists with apps on smartphones. Apps will repeatedly ask, and only need you to accidentally click “okay” once.) EDITED TO ADD: It’s actually worse than I thought. Edge urges users to store passwords, ID numbers, and even passport numbers, all of which get uploaded to Microsoft by default when synch is enabled. - But Microsoft at their build conference said they are a woke corporation: https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1456344147103653889 https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1456344147103653889 Or maybe the performative art of being a woke altruistic corporation is the subterfuge for being evil.

mgh2 5y ago
All companies play politics to gain customer's hearts and minds ($$$). All FAANGs play this game masterfully.
- cyberge99 5y ago
  Google’s slogan was once: “Do no evil”
  - actually_a_dog 5y ago
    No, it was "don' be evil." You can do a lot of evil and still not be evil if you adopt a utilitarian position and claim that the good you've done outweighs it.
jadbox 5y ago
Is it at least end to end encrypted?
SahAssar 5y ago
Why does the presenters describe their appearance and clothes? Is that supposed to be some sort of accessibility thing (for blind people)? If so, how does it help blind people to know that someones top is sleeveless and that they have dark hair?

Mountain_Skies 5y ago

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 don't use it for day to day links. I do recall going through this with Chrome and Firefox in the past when they pushed syncing as a huge wonderful benefit for me and I had no interest at all. I'm sure some people have bookmarks as part of their personal workflow and are grateful to have this syncing ability for multiple devices. That's great for them but all vendors need a very strick opt-in policy, not a "we're so sure you're going to love this that we turned it on for you" scheme.

paulryanrogers 5y ago
Firefox doesn't sync by default. And they don't appear to be promoting me to do it on new installs.
- CogitoCogito 5y ago
  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.
  - paulryanrogers 5y ago
    I believe that's how Weave worked. The newer Firefox Sync included (still includes?) sharing capabilities that call that into question.
    - CogitoCogito 5y ago
      > 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 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.

silverpepsi 5y ago

Seems a bit late to make hoopla about a much more minor infraction. With Onedrive I'm facing the nightmare that you are not allowed to configure it until syncing is in progress. If you pause syncing immediately on install, you're not allowed to change settings to prevent said syncing from happening. I have a mix of personal and business data on there. This has been the case for a few years now but recently got worse. Basically, I don't want my hard drive contaminated with this data when going through customs, that's why I am traveling with a FRESHLY FORMATTED AND REINSTALLED laptop. And what does MS do? Coerce me into all this data's metadata touching down on a drive I have no intention of ever letting touch it. Makes my blood boil. It's a well documented fact these idiots in customs will infringe your privacy for shits and giggles and harass you about stuff that has nothing to do with any valid legal concern. Thanks Microsoft.

tata71 5y ago
> Be HN commenter > Try to avoid own data being on machine > Log into Microsoft cloud account > ???
- iamstupidsimple 5y ago
  I mean, Windows shouldn't be this user-hostile in the first place. Most of it is literally not designed for "HN commenters".
seized 5y ago
This isn't really a product issue. Separate your data properly, uninstall or disable the OneDrive client and use the web version if you need something, use a different product.... Not everything has to bend to your "unique" needs. And it's hard to take your complaint or needs seriously when it starts out with mixing personal and business data.
- silverpepsi 5y ago
  But here's the thing, they literally provide checkboxes for individual directories you want to sync. They've literally designed it to my needs (actually I was trying to simplify, the reality is I don't mix business but personal grades of porn to varying grades of legality, so do you seriously expect me to have multiple personal Office256 accounts for categories of porn????) It's just their default settings went from years of causing data corruption as soon as you try to change the default of everything checked to this new cluster of ghost syncing.

mobilemidget 5y ago

I believe they scrape all links pasted in Skype conversations too

_trampeltier 5y ago
Everybody scrape all links. Mostly for the preview function. Just s3nd a unique url with some messengers or mail and look at the serverlogs. Thats also a reason to use even a simple login.
- donmcronald 5y ago
  Yep. My email client has message tracking built in and I forgot to disable it after a re-install once. A lot of messages are "read" immediately. I've always been curious how promotional mailers handle that.
rolph 5y ago
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
- lrem 5y ago
  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.
  - rolph 5y ago
    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
tata71 5y ago
and all filenames in the OS.

foobarbaz33 5y ago

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

bloopernova 5y ago
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 from the SQLite database that Firefox uses for bookmarks. I feel like there's a lot of unexplored personal value to one's bookmarks and history.
- dandanua 5y ago
  Firefox bookmarks tagging is a killer feature for me. I even bookmark some local files through it. Too bad it doesn't work on mobile.
  - bloopernova 5y ago
    What I'd like to be able to do is unify the tags between Firefox and my Emacs org-roam/org-mode data. I think it could be useful to be able to see a view of which bookmarks have the same tags as the document I'm viewing, and vice-versa. Plus a timeline of tags/bookmarks/documents/pages could further bring to light some relationships between information. For instance, "around the time I was writing lots of stuff about AWS IAM roles, I bookmarked these pages, read these sites, browsed these tags". It's only a half-formed idea and unfortunately it'd require both lots of Emacs elisp work and an extension in Firefox.
    - gbrindisi 5y ago
      I wanted to do the same, and in the end gave up in favour of a simpler approach: I drop the bookmarks in my notes, I can tag as I please, less moving parts and it's easier to search. But I would still like to see someone figuring this out!

Borrible 5y ago

Of course they don't steal anything from you. They just preserve your precious little soul. To your best interest. Which may coincidentially be in their best interest. A friendly customer service, because you happen to honour them using their products. And, if you're lucky, even in the best interest of people that do protect you against evil forces out there in the dark. From time to time they may look into your precious little soul lying down on the ocean ground in an underwater Microsoft data center, to see if all is well with you. Think about it, sometimes you yourself don't know you're part of those forces, but Microsoft and those other people might know. And they can help you. They are like shepherds to their flock. Some may call it customer profiling, customer-retention or even vendor lock-in, mass surveillance and other ugly terms, but I tell you it is love. Yes, pure caring and love. You may not understand that at first. Like Apple had to learn bitterly recently. But I tell you, in the end, with their help, there will be just shiny happy people around you. Amen.

anon9001 5y ago
Developers! Developers! Developers!
1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago
Where do "we" want to go today?
3np 5y ago
You have won the victory over yourself.
- Borrible 5y ago
  Well, Winston, the party would love to know how many out there don't realize that it's satire. That's fine for the party, because the others don't realize it's not.

sharken 5y ago

One of the comments on that link has offered this URL where Force Sync is mentioned. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/deployedge/microsoft-edge-policies https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/deployedge/microsoft-edge-p... To me it's absolutely mind boggling the amount of text in that link. There are nearly 100.000 words, which is the same as: A 100,000 word count will create about 200 pages single-spaced or 400 pages double-spaced when using normal margins (1″) and 12 pt. Arial or Times New Roman font. Reference https://capitalizemytitle.com/page-count/100000-words/ https://capitalizemytitle.com/page-count/100000-words/

siproprio 5y ago
That page is so awful it crashed on my machine.

hbarka 5y ago

I’m lamenting Google’s decision to stop supporting Google Bookmarks. It was my personal search archive, simple and in the cloud.

ddtaylor 5y ago

My Windows system is used only for gaming and I have a strict rule that it cannot log into anything but gaming related content like Steam etc. No actual accounts or credentials ever go into that system.