Google Releases Google Browser Sync Extension 389
Pneuma ROCKS writes "Google has just released the Google Browser Sync extension for Firefox. This extension allows you to save your bookmarks, history and passwords on Google servers, effectively giving you a 'roaming profile,' which you can sync on any computer running Firefox (and the extension, of course)."
Encrypted? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Encrypted? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Encrypted? (Score:2)
It depends on how much of correct data you provided when you signed up.
Re:Encrypted? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think it's as simple as that. If you're using GMail, you're likely logged in to Google every time you do a search. Do a bunch of porn viewing, and Google has the means to link that to your login. Take it a step further and keep your bookmarks there.. well... they certainly have more to draw on.
Personally, I'm not so worried about what Google sees. I'm worried about the recent moves by the gov't to collect that info. Google is unintentionally setting up a nice little trap for a bunch of people. (No, this isn't a Google is evil statement, just pointing out the dangers of centralizing all this stuff.)
Re:Encrypted? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why should I do that? No, of course I don't stay logged in any more than it is necessary.
Google is unintentionally setting up a nice little trap for a bunch of people.
I don't believe that founders and managers of a multi-billion dollar enterprise are so dumb that they don't realize what they are doing. I am convinced that they are perfectly aware of all the implications - they know them better than we do, it's their business after all. Also, the government is not silent on the matter - it approached Google already, so claiming innocence won't work. Google knows damn well what it is doing, and that is to become the ultimate data warehouse for, and about, everyone on the planet. And all that data will be for sale.
Re:Encrypted? (Score:4, Insightful)
I was not trying to imply that. They obviously feel very comfortable with what they're doing, but that alone will not protect their users. In theory, the gov't shouldn't have even asked them for the records, yet it still happened. Worse, we've got a monkey in the white-house that may bend the rules a bit to try even harder. Now maybe my imagination's getting ahead of me, but just because they think they know what they're doing doesn't mean anybody's safe. Once you've commited the data to Google, that's it, you cannot undo it.
Re:Encrypted? (Score:3)
Re:Encrypted? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why should I do that? No, of course I don't stay logged in any more than it is necessary.
Unless you make sure to clear all Google-cookies after logging
out and before logging back in GMail, it won't really matter
if you're logged in at the time you're searching or not.
M.
Re:Encrypted? (Score:3, Funny)
And of course you never have your friends send you *real* email nor mention any personal information, right? Your Gmail account is just for spam collection?
Re:Encrypted? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Encrypted? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Encrypted? (Score:4, Insightful)
to exploit their power than to read your ultimately important personal data from gmail. I find
it interesting that people have such an ego boost that they imagine that from the half a billion
interactive net users, they and their pocket money are the targets of all the hackers.
I'm amazed that anyone would still say something this stupid (and that others would actually moderate it up). I seem to get several dozen phishing attempts per day, with people trying to gain access to my PayPal, Ebay, bank accounts, and other online services. I guess I must be stupid and rich to gain the attention of such target limited hackers, right?
No, of course not. Not only are there countless hackers out there with nefarious intentions, but usually their dirty work can be automated -- e.g. a simple trojan that your cousin has on his laptop, which then takes over your router in a method only possible from the inside (or installing a net listener), then automatically relaying whatever information they want. This is ignoring the fact that carriers aren't exactly the pinnacle of security, and it's entirely possible that curious or criminal employees have net monitors, and that's not even including the whole government angle.
The "security doesn't matter because no one cares about you" angle was dumb when people were saying it in the 90s. Now it just strikes me as unbelievable.
I have zero trojans of viruses on my PC (despite your defeatist "why bother fighting them?" attitude), and I want sensitive communications to be encrypted. Everyone should demand the same.
Ps. if you are familiar with how SSL or any exchangeable keypair based encryption protocols work,
you should realize that people who have constant access to your network traffic, will find out your
information anyway.
Wow, really? Care to enlighten us on how that could be, apart from some temporary implementation defects in a couple of clients (such as Internet Explorer). I call bullshit, and say that the entire foundation of your argument is ignorant nonsense.
Re:Encrypted? (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.google.com/tools/firefox/browsersync/f
Re:Encrypted? (Score:3, Insightful)
Its not really clear about how much of your information is encryped. Your passwords yes, but your browsing history? Your bookmarks?
I would expect google to want to datamine both of those things, but I would not feel comfortable giving it to them in a form that they could use because it means that someone else, like our friendly NSA for example, could use it too.
With that in mind - does anyone know of an extention that does the same sort of sync, but encrypts ever
Re:Encrypted? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Encrypted? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Encrypted? (Score:5, Informative)
I've just downloaded and installed it. It automatically encrypts your cookies and passwords (it doesn't let you change this setting), and gives you the option of encrypting history, bookmarks, and tabs and windows if you choose to synchronize them. Additionally, it's all optional.
And if you were really security-conscious, you could tell it to not synchronize anything at all.
Assuming it keeps working (it has so far), I really like it. It makes keeping bookmarks actually worthwhile.
Re:Encrypted? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Encrypted? (Score:3, Insightful)
I haven't looked at the actual firefox extension but it wouldn't make sense to offer encryption and still store the PIN.
Re:Encrypted? (Score:5, Insightful)
It would if the point of encryption is to keep it private *in-transit*. Just as HTTPS doesn't prevent the site you are interacting with to get all that data you submitted, the encryption prevents bystanders from seeing it.
So all this encryption does is give you some security that nobody but google will be able to see it. So if you value your privacy at all the question remains, do you trust google with it? Do you trust google to look out for your interests, even under government pressure?
Just for Now? or Always and Forever?
I'm with that other individual: Is there any extension that does this with an ftp/webdav/... server of *my* choice?
Re:Encrypted? (Score:3, Informative)
What's the point of encrypting my information?
By encrypting your information, it will be transmitted to and stored on Google's servers in a format that is nearly impossible to interpret without the PIN. That means that without the PIN, no one, not even Google, will be able to read your data
Re:Encrypted? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Encrypted? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Encrypted? (Score:5, Insightful)
If I were overseeing a high-profile company who was releasing a product that in any way used encryption, you can bet I would couch every claim about its security with some sort of qualifier.
No intelligent person ever uses superlatives when discussing encryption, unless you want to be on the hook in case it ever gets broken.
Re:Encrypted? (Score:5, Interesting)
Ironically (Score:5, Insightful)
This is precisely what a "home page" originally was.
Re:Encrypted? (Score:3, Funny)
I don't believe this is any worse than that.
You can't hide in the shadows your whole life. You've gotta come out of your closet and let someone sniff you once in a while. It's very liberating.
Honest.
Re:Encrypted? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Encrypted? (Score:2)
Ads will conveniently follow your bookmarks (Score:2, Insightful)
You know that all that information about bookmarks and favourites will be of use to marketers.
From my part, for now, I will pass...
Re:Ads will conveniently follow your bookmarks (Score:5, Insightful)
(Besides your passwords to other sites...)
Re:Ads will conveniently follow your bookmarks (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Ads will conveniently follow your bookmarks (Score:3, Insightful)
Really, marketing is not a dirty word...
-- John.
Re:Ads will conveniently follow your bookmarks (Score:4, Interesting)
Now, imagine if riaasearch turned evil...
You're right. It's not a dirty word; it's a weasel word...
Like those cat parasite things; Toxoplasma [boingboing.net]. Supposedly makes some people feel good, more outgoing and warmhearted. But a parasite is still a parasite...
Re:Ads will conveniently follow your bookmarks (Score:3, Informative)
You know that all that information about bookmarks and favourites will be of use to marketers.
From TFFAQ [google.com] "That means that without the PIN, no one, not even Google, will be able to read your data"
In other words, no Google won't use your "bookmarks *and* favourites" (that's the same thing IIRC) for marketing since they won't be able to read them.
Re:Ads will conveniently follow your bookmarks (Score:5, Insightful)
Joe Q. Public likes Jessica R. Abbit, but he's a high-schooler on a budget. Instead of sending him the add for the Tacori Diamond bracelet, let's send him the advertisement for the CVS box-o-chocolates. He's more likely to respond to that ad, which results in increased revenue for GOOG.
Information is valuable. Organized information that no one else has is "invaluable"!
Re:Ads will conveniently follow your bookmarks (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Ads will conveniently follow your bookmarks (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Ads will conveniently follow your bookmarks (Score:2, Insightful)
The data is encrypted before being sent to Google's servers. Nice knee-jerk reaction though.
Mod parent down. So what if it's encrypted iF Google has the encryption key. From the FAQ:
Re:Ads will conveniently follow your bookmarks (Score:2, Informative)
Wrongo! (Score:2)
PIN + ACCOUNT back into a COOKIE HASH which is the MOTHER OF THE ALL tracking mechanism... Just try to use Google toolbar WITH a cookie cutter extension.
Need I say more?
Re:Ads will conveniently follow your bookmarks (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Ads will conveniently follow your bookmarks (Score:3, Funny)
This must be written by a lawyer. It does not say if Google has the PIN or not.
Re:Ads will conveniently follow your bookmarks (Score:4, Insightful)
We, Google Server, will use your PIN to unlock that information
OR
We, Google Client App, will use your PIN to unlock that information.
I personally don't see why Google would ever need to unlock the encrypted information on their side (unless they want to be evil), and obviously, it won't be you who's unlocking the information, but the firefox extension (we, google client app) will be.
Re:Ads will conveniently follow your bookmarks (Score:2)
So it's encrypted en-route. How about when Google gets it? Seeing as how they mine GMail for hooks to serve ads, it seems likely they'd similarly analyse your bookmarks.
History? (Score:2, Funny)
You can turn this option off. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:History? (Score:2)
Although if you read the FAQ, you'd know this already.
Re:History? (Score:2)
awesome (Score:2)
Anyways, this seems like a good idea, especially people who have several homes or places they browse the net. Also a good way to backup my favorites. Any clue how much slower this'll make Firefox?
Re:awesome (Score:3, Informative)
Maybe I'm retarded, but that didn't seem sarcastic to me, so here are some other firefox extensions from google [google.com]. The "beta" (yeah, google loves the beta) version of google toolbar for firefox was released on July 7th, 2005 [mozillazine.org].
Re:awesome (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.google.com/tools/firefox/index.html [google.com]
Pr0n (Score:5, Funny)
-Peter
Re:Pr0n (Score:2)
Seriously... some data should just stay at home.
Re:Pr0n (Score:3, Insightful)
And I don't want all of my work bookmarks in my home browser. I have a number of work-related bookmarks that point to local files (such as Oracle docs) and to places on the corporate intranet. Both are useless to me from home (the intranet ones may be useful if I was VPN'd, but that's exceptionally rare).
I would love to find a bookmarks synchronizer that allows you to exclude bookmarks and still work through the regular bookmarks menu.
Ultimate
Spiffy (Score:3, Funny)
BookmarkRank? (Score:5, Interesting)
Hmmm.....
For those who are loathe ... (Score:5, Informative)
Google has just released the Google Browser Sync extension for Firefox. This extension allows you to save your bookmarks, history and passwords on Google servers, effectively giving you a 'roaming profile,' which you can sync on any computer running Firefox (and the extension, of course).
For those who are loathe to continue shovelling their personal info at Google ...
Then, from any computer:
If the system you are on doesn't have wget, you can just visit the URL and use the links in the browser or save the file to your profile on the machine. If you don't want it so easily accessible on the 'net, then you can use a different file name or put it in some randomly named directory.
Re:For those who are loathe ... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:For those who are loathe ... (Score:2)
Then, from any computer:
wget -O ~/.firefox/default//bookmarks.html http://mywebhost/bookmarks.html [mywebhost]
It's just stupid that this isn't thoroughly embedded into the browser, accessable via a webDAV shared directory. I mean, the technology has been around since like 1996 or so!
We use WebDAV as a backup file store/network drive that our sales dept. uses. By running webDAV on Linux, we can build in easy virus scanning
Re:For those who are loathe ... (Score:5, Insightful)
(I just tried it on your site, Roberto Sanchez; noticed you haven't done it
Re:For those who are loathe ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:For those who are loathe ... (Score:2)
Or just get the Windows native ports of both apps. Its not exactly hard.
Just because Windows doesn't come with them bundled already, doesn't mean they're not available to Windows users that might want them.
Too Late (Score:3, Interesting)
saved passwords (Score:3, Interesting)
Trust (Score:5, Insightful)
Either way you cant say Google aren't pushing to see what users want, and integrating it into whats good for Google. My opinion? I don't know, I like and trust goggle as much as I trust any corporation, but do I want them to have yet more information about me? Probably not. So personally I will give it a miss, although it might be useful in the future, and if it takes off in internet kiosks (and why not) then all the better. It has some serious benefit to people who travel regularly and don't own laptops and PDA's.
Cue the "tin foil hat" posts, closely followed by the "there is no privacy anyway" posts possibly followed by some random "I don't like the new layout" posts.
Re:Trust (Score:2)
You forgot to cue the "the data's encrypted" posts. So you don't need to worry about handing over any more personal information.
Re:Trust (Score:3, Informative)
--
3. GOOGLE PRIVACY POLICY
For information about our data protection practices and the data that may be available to Google when you use the Firefox Extensions, please see the Google Privacy Policy at http://w [google.com]
Spyware (Score:5, Interesting)
I have no problem answering surveys for those mall clipboard guys as long as I'm not in a hurry. I have no problem allowing Google tracking my web habits, as long as I'm getting something valuable, Gmail, Maps, Earth, Search, et. al. in return. When I quit finding their apps useful, I'll rescind my offer to be profiled.
Googles response (Score:5, Funny)
I'm sorry Dave, Im afraid I can't do that.
Re:Googles response (Score:4, Funny)
Worried about Privacy? Use Foxmarks instead. (Score:5, Informative)
Foxmarks is basically the same thing, but just for bookmarks (and not on Google's servers). It's great for keeping bookmarks across multiple machines, and also really useful for those who dual (or triple) boot a single machine. My triple-boot MacBook [sharealike.org] keeps all its bookmarks in sync with Foxmarks!
Re:Worried about Privacy? Use Foxmarks instead. (Score:2)
Re:Worried about Privacy? Use Foxmarks instead. (Score:4, Interesting)
No. [foxcloud.com]
Foxmarks does nothing to protect your privacy, but that won't prevent the tinfoil hats from citing privacy when offering alternatives to Google. Google, on the other hand, does support encryption, to the effect that your data is stored on their servers in encrypted form and is only decrypted locally using your key.
Re:Worried about Privacy? Use Foxmarks instead. (Score:2)
I know this may not work for some because it doesn't sync when either computer if offline, because it is a bit heavier th
Re:Worried about Privacy? Use Foxmarks instead. (Score:2)
Hah. I dropped by Mozilla Add-ons [mozilla.org] just now and guess what extension is being featured at the moment. Foxmarks.
My passwords trough the windows ? (Score:2, Insightful)
How can this extension protect in any way some personal data on forign computers from spywares and viruses? (not to mention they will be on an internet server somewhere)
Maybe I'll use it for the bookmarks, after all it might be very handy
PageRank? (Score:5, Insightful)
behind the curve (Score:2, Funny)
Your anti-piracy pledge (Score:3, Informative)
It's to protect themselves (Score:3, Insightful)
The 'pledge' is basically legal protection, so that if someone did use the extension to do whatever bad things, (and really, most of them seem pretty impossible to use the extension to do) Google will not themselves be blamed. Realistically, this sort of measure probably won't get them very far in a real court case, but hey, every little helps.
Great Googley moogley! (Score:4, Interesting)
I have just one question. When is it too much of a good thing, privacy or no privacy?
Server side settings are nice (Score:3, Interesting)
To be honest, though, what'd be REALLY exciting would be a similar tool for Thunderbird that enabled a secure writeable server side (pref. LDAP) address book, not just the limited read-only LDAP address book support it currently has. If their calendar app added WebDAV+TLS or HTTPs WebDAV remote calendar storage, it'd start to feel like an app made for people who (*gasp*) use more than one computer.
Maybe Google's move here will show the mozilla folks that people are interested in these features.
Buggy! (Score:3, Informative)
Finally it would not synch anything for me. It kept giving me different errors related to how I have too much data, or to "try again later". Maybe their servers are being hit hard now.
I am uninstalling this stuff, maybe some time in the future I will reinstall when they have fixed the problems...
Pretty much no security (Score:2, Insightful)
Quick math. 26 lower case letters + 26 upper case + 10 numeric characters. (should cover most users)
62^8 possibilities. Google probably has about 100,000 servers [2], so that's about 2 billion combinations per server [3] - chump change.
AYPABTG.
8 character passwords work because servers can throttle bogus logins - few seconds delay after 3 failed attempts for example. There's very little security again
What's the excitement about? (Score:2, Informative)
Try SiteBar if you don't trust Google (Score:2)
NSA sue Google (Score:3, Funny)
Today the NSA filed a anti trust suite againt Google inc
When a legal representative of the NSA was questioned about the case he replied, "Our case is based on Googles practice of gathering data in direct competition to the NSA, in such a manner that it's impossible for us to compete".
Our reporter was suddenly arrested before he could question Google on the matter, based on child sex porn bookmarks handed over to legal authorities by google.
Sorry but no. (Score:2)
So thanks for the offer Google, but no. You don't need to kno
You can encrypt everything it can sync (Score:5, Insightful)
Literally everything it can sync can be encrypted.
Second, it syncs much more than bookmarks.
I for one, enjoy having my history, tabs, and windows saved between the laptop and desktops I work on.
Encrypting the Passwords (Score:2)
Google to us - All your password are belong to us (Score:2)
Unfortunate flaw right now (Score:3, Informative)
Currently, Google Browser Sync only allows you to be logged in to one browser at a time"
The people would mostly likely use this proably have Firefox on 2 to 3 machines and it is certainly not uncommon to A) leave your computer running with a browser window open and then get on another machine running firefox B) be on firefox on say a laptop while your wife/girlfriend etc is on your main machine(and no they shouldn't all have to have seperate accounts).
I see they are "working" on having multiple accounts but personally this simply won't work for me and many others until then. On the positive side it's nice to have Google developing for Firefox and if the encryption is sound this sounds like a nice feature that maybe one day will become standard on Firefox.
no evil? (Score:2)
It may be encrypted... (Score:2)
Not like I care, though. I'm using it right now; I've been looking for something like this for a long time now.
Moving away from the philosophical debate... (Score:5, Informative)
On my Mac, this extension was rather problematic. It installed just fine, and syncs with Firefox on my Linux box just fine. But when I launch subsequent sessions of Firefox on my Mac, I get one window telling me it's connecting to the Google server - and it overlays (and 95% of the time prevents interaction with) the window that pops up asking for my master password (for FF's saved passwords feature). Can't type my master password, can't get past this point.
In order to actually run Firefox again, I had to manually remove the extension from my profile.
I'm used to Google's "betas" working quite smoothly - it's unusual to run into one with a big old flaw like this one.
Does it even work? (Score:3, Funny)
When I start it with default config after some thinking it tells me upload too large. try disabling some components and trying again. When I uncheck all the options (i.e. don't save anything) after some thinking it tells me settings change did not complete. please try again later.
As I said, great tool. Doesn't work.
Robert
What does Google get out of this? (Score:3, Interesting)
If it weren't for %$*#!! Mozilla... (Score:3, Funny)
THANK YOU GOOGLE for sorting all this shit out. Too bad it took an "evil-but-not-really" third party to figure out what the end-users have been clamoring on about for years.
And yes, I'm aware that the new, improved Mozilla will implement SQLite [wikipedia.org]. Eventually, when it's released, probably, they think.
Re:Something about this... (Score:2, Informative)