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On Linux, Firefox stores site-data in a folder named the same (discuss.tchncs.de)
submitted 11 months ago by to c/firefox@lemmy.ml
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Is this behavior expected? I would imagine it would be a privacy violation in a multi-user system. I thought they had some sort of encryption for hiding the sites that I visit.

BTW, FF does not do this on private mode. But still it is concerning, that any program can know about the sites I visit just by looking at ~/.mozilla/profile/storage/default.

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[–] [S] 3 points 11 months ago (3 children)

But wouldn't it be better if they chose to obfuscate it. Are there any inherent disadvantage in doing so?

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  • [–] 27 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    Generally, no. If a person has access to your home folder, it doesn’t matter if site-data is site-data or some UUID, the person can still look around and find that data. How to do so would be on the internet, in the source code for Firefox.

    Firefox simplifies its engineering efforts and makes site-data clearly visible to the proper user by relying on the system’s security measures instead of inventing its own bespoke ones.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago*

    I mean, lots of problems rise from this from interoperability, debug ability, removing control & ownership of your own data...etc

    Obfuscating the data means you (The user, via your own means) no longer have access to it, you cannot integrate with it, ....etc This is a problem for a project that promotes itself for openness and compatibility.

    Firefox should not be solving your user level access permission problems, that's not it's job 🤦

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