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I generally have a "home" Firefox window with my most used tabs pinned. Sometimes I close it before another window, so I was frustrated to "lose" it and having to redo my pins. But recently I discovered this feature. Joy!
this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2023
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I like Firefox but I don't love that they keep track of all of my bookmarks and their history plus there's no way to turn that off. I thought they were more privacy oriented than that.
Edit: I guess I should have explained it better.
NOT private and anyone could track that instead of tracking you directly.
wat
I edited my comment.
I'm still confused. You can delete your history and bookmarks and it is even easier to not create them in the first place, if that's what you want.
Tell me how to delete my bookmark history, I'll wait.
What do you mean by bookmark history? Just delete your bookmarks.
Go to the hamburger menu where your settings are and look at your bookmarks and history. It's a way of tracking. Obviously it's not a huge deal or I would use another browser but I still think it's a little shady. It doesn't delete if you close out your browser and have delete history turned on, you can't manually delete it and there's no setting to turn it off. It's obvious you don't mind tracking so you do you.
Are you talking about completely wiping the session?
For example, you open a private window (say, session 1) and bookmark sites while in session 1 to refer to later in the same session. Upon closing session 1 the behaviour you expect is for those bookmarks to be deleted. However in session 2, the bookmarks you created in session 1 are persistent?
Yes, session 2 keeps all of the bookmarks in the history in the order I saved them even though I'm in private mode and I have it so it's supposed to delete all history when I close the window. Not tabs, but the entire browser is shut down.
I don't think you understand what tracking means. If you have an issue seeing your bookmarks then you should delete your bookmarks and not create them in the first place. Same goes for your history, just disable it entirely if you don't want that feature. Neither one have anything to do with tracking though.
@PeleSpirit @DarkThoughts not sure if I understand this correctly, please excuse if what I write is beside the point. History and bookmarks are independent. History records whatever site you visit, according to your settings. Bookmarks are different, they are created only if you take action for each bookmark (like using the star in the URL bar or hitting Ctrl+d). They are easily deleted.
I don't think you all do because it's pretty well hidden. If I go to a shopping site and I want to buy a 3D printer and I save 2 of them and I save the reviews as a bookmark, cool, I have that for later to go shop there. Now, that info is saved and I can be advertised to for 3d printers because they know I'm looking at it right now. I can't close out my browser where it's set to delete all history, I can't manually delete the info and there is no way to turn off the saving of this information.
Go to your hamburger setting for firefox and look at the bookmarks and history. It will be saved there from weeks ago. If it's not tracked great, say so. If it is tracked, then let me turn it off. I don't care if people are interested in what I'm interested in, but knowing the order knows what I'm interested in so they can sell me shit. Who hasn't checked an airline for a price and then gone back a second later and the price went up. If they know I'm saving bookmarks for a trip, what do you think I'll start out with? A lower price or a higher price?
I don't know for sure that they're tracking me this way, I just think it's shady they don't give you the option to turn it off and no one really knows about it. It's not enough for me to switch browsers, it's just something I think should be addressed.
@PeleSpirit you can totally not record history, or delete it automatically every time you close the browser. Also, it isn't sent to anybody, except if you ask to sync it between browser, then it is encrypted, unreadable for anyoone but you and unshared. (Same for bookmarks sync.) You can totally erase bookmarks : open bookmark window, choose them, erase. I don't know how to erase them a automatically when the browser closes. That is because bookmarks are designed to keep between sessions.
Again, it's the history of when I bookmarked that I don't like. I know you're trying to be helpful, but you guys aren't understanding what I mean. You can tell if I'm planning for a trip, if I'm saving bookmarks for a certain kind of doctor, etc., right now by knowing the order I'm saving. I want to keep the bookmarks, not the history. If you're on windows, go to your hamburger and look at the bookmarks tab, it will show you every bookmark, in order, that you've saved for around 20 of them. If people were trying to sell me something, that would be a great way to see what I'm interested in. Try to right click and delete them, try to find a setting that turns off save bookmark history, then let me know if it works. Someone was saying that it does work, but I can't find it, so it might be a corrupted version of Firefox. When I tried to fix it earlier, I found someone also trying to get rid of it but they had no luck as well so I think that people are just misunderstanding what I don't like.
You mean "recent bookmarks"? Huh, never noticed that was there. I think it's probably locally stored and not really a thing websites can just access.
I'm pretty sure most people don't know that's there which means it's probably tracked. If it's not tracked, I'd like them to come out and say so or at least let me have the option to turn it off. Obviously I know they know what bookmarks I keep, it just sort of bugs me that there is still a way to track people.
After reading the parent comment, I [think I] finally understand what you're on about.
There's no reason to suspect the "recently bookmarked" list would be tracked; that's just downright paranoid.
Here's how to disable it.
Yeah, the only options are to boolean, number or string. There is no option for a true/false like when I've used this technique before. There are no right click options to do anything but delete on windows.
Thanks anyway.
"Boolean" is true/false.
Had no idea, boolean is a totally different thing in 3d software. It's where you remove something from another something or combine.
Edit: It doesn't delete the old ones and I have to restart the session for them not to save. It's a strange deal, not sure why they make it so hard to do when most people don't even know it's there.
Nah, it's exactly the same thing. 3D software is just applying a Boolean function to two sets of points at the same time, instead of one scaler piece of data like reading a setting.
In other words, Firefox is doing f(a), where f is a unary Boolean function (identity or negation) and a is a single true/false value, while your 3D software is doing f(A, B), where f is a binary Boolean function (union a.k.a. AND, intersection a.k.a. OR, etc.) and A and B are vectors of true/false values representing whether particular points of space are contained within object A or B respectively.
(Some 3D software might be more sophisticated than that, using mathematical expressions of the object boundaries to get exact answers instead of interpolating between points, but I'm just trying to convey the basic concept here.)
I appreciate the effort to explain it but dude, that's all totally foreign to me. You guys literally speak different languages. I learn the software and make it do what I want with the names they give me. I'll learn enough to be dangerous if something really goes wrong and I would never touch the about:config unless someone told me exactly how to do it. I'm a software user kind of person but glad people who know their shit like you exist or there would be no software to use. On just the software side, it changes so fast or I have to use a different one that I retain just enough to get the work done on a project and then let it go or I would go crazy. I use a lot of different software, lol.
That's fair; it's literally a math/computer science/computer engineering topic.
Personally, I'm of the opinion that more of that sort of thing ought to be taught to everybody in K-12 (because you aren't really computer literate unless you can automate workflows, if not by "programming" then at least by scripting), but that's a rant for a different thread.
Anyway, I'm sorry about Firefox not behaving the way you want it to, and hope that it improves for you in the future.
I agree that it probably should be taught but we're fighting for books not being banned. Strange times.
Thanks for the good luck and trying to help, I'll have to go to mozilla it looks like.
It's not working again, lol. So weird, I just double checked that it said false and it completely saves my bookmarked history. I don't know why it's so tenacious.
Try changing the capitalization or using "0" instead of false or something. Otherwise, I give up and you should ask for help in a Mozilla forum or chatroom.
I'll try mozilla but I doubt they'll answer, that's where I saw the question for the same thing from the other dude. Thanks again for trying to help.
Are you talking about them syncing to your Firefox account? Because you can turn that off or just not sign in.
No, I don't have an account with them, go to your hamburger menu and look at your bookmarks and history, there's no way to delete that info or turn off that they save it.
The whole point of bookmarks is that they are saved sites so why would they automatically delete them? Also just click on Manage Bookmarks or Manage History and you can delete anything from there… If you don’t want history to be saved then use a private window.
Again, history saving is off and it's supposed to delete any history when I shut my window which is every hour or so and I always opens in a private window. I want it to save my bookmarks, not the order I saved it or my history. You're not listening or trolling me. Did you try and do what I told you in a private window?
You don’t want them to save the order of your bookmarks? why
I’m actually very happy to see your comment as it means Lemmy might actually not just be full of tech nerds, because it’s clear you have no idea what you’re talking about or don’t know how to properly communicate your issue.
Lol, just because you don't know you don't know something doesn't mean you have to be a dick about it. Tracking the order of your bookmarks means that they know what you're interested in right now, it's very similar to tracking what websites you're on. I guess you don't mind that either, cool, you do you.
Firefox isn’t tracking your bookmarks and selling it to advertisers, Firefox is open source. They keep your bookmark order as convenience so that you can have them in the order you like. Same goes for history, it’s just a tool to see what sites you’ve visited if you’re trying to get back to one, it’s not tracking you.
Okay, cool, then let me turn it off.
Do... What?
I edited my comment
@PeleSpirit @oce of course you can turn it off.
How?
@PeleSpirit deactivate sync.
Could you be a little more detailed? I'm not signed into any account or have any synch deliberately turned on and actually tried to turn this off. Again, how?
@PeleSpirit Sorry, I thought your complaint was regarding firefox storing your history on their servers.
...but you can?
Right click any bookmark under the hamburger menu, and select Delete Bookmark. It deletes. You can also delete all in the bookmark manager. But those seem like a non-issue, since they have to be manually created.
Same thing works under History in the hamburger menu. Right-click any item in history and select Delete Page. It deletes. Same as above, all can be deleted in manager or by selecting Clear Recent History > Time Range to Clear = Everything.
Firefox will not store history at all if you go to Settings > Privacy and Security > set "Firefox will" to "Never remember history".
So..... ?
I'm 100% swearing that it does save my bookmark history in the order I saved it and I have it as never remember history. You can't right click and delete it from the history. I suppose you could delete the bookmark, but that would defeat the purpose.
I tried it before commenting. You can.
But if it's saving your history while being set otherwise, it sounds like you have a config issue.
Okay, could my firefox be compromised? A couple of years ago I couldn't update from the menu and I had to delete it and reinstall form their site. A couple of months ago my computer wouldn't update and now everyone is saying that something I'm 100% sure of is happening to me, isn't happening to them or I'm not explaining it correctly. This seems eerily similar to the couple of years ago thing.
It's going to be hard to diagnose, ultimately (e.g. what system are you running it on? What version of Firefox is it?). But the short answer is: it's always possible something is compromised. You could uninstall it completely and reinstall fresh from Mozilla (again), in which case you should see identical behavior to what myself and others have mentioned.
It's updated to the last one but this has been happening for a long time so I guess it could have been carried through. All of you are so adamant that what I'm obviously seeing isn't what you're seeing, that I think I need to do that. I had to give photo evidence last time, lol.
I do remember someone else having the same issues when I looked for a solution, so that's kind of strange too.