Rant, Firefox's Smart Folders

Why is it that no one complains about the lack of privacy in the Firefox Smart Folders but are quick to roast Chrome for collecting info? I think what Firefox does is worse because anyone who uses your PC with your Firefox profile can instantly see what you recently bookmarked or what sites you visit frequently. Are most Firefox users OK with this lack of privacy?

I know you can delete these folders. But I have never head anyone complaining about this blatant lack of privacy. Is this OK because Mozilla is doing this? If Chrome was doing this they would of been burn alive at the stake.

Anyway I just recently started using Firefox again more frequent and I guess I had forgotten about these stupid folders.

 

I personally don't like it, but if you want privacy you have to be proactive and go out of your way to make sure you get it, with FF or anything else. Everyone these days think everything has to be "smart" because ordinary users are stupid. I had a teacher one time tell me the hardest part about being a network tech is dealing with the "wetware," i.e. end users. Then later he said some people don't have any business working with computers, and I thought, uh huh. Anyway, I'm getting completely turned off of computers and the internet these days because of the direction it's going. I quit all things Google many moons ago.

 

I don't know what you're referring to but I doubt anything is being stored if you're using private browsing mode. And if your attacker has access to the system there's nothing Firefox can do about it except encrypt the contents, which would either:

1) Only work with a masterpassword
2) Only work with a powered off system

But I don't really know which feature you're referring to.

 

I'm complaining about the fact that if you are using the smart folders, anyone who uses your Firefox to browse the net will have access to your most visited sites, and recently bookmarked sites.

Here's an example and this did not happen to me.
You are browsing the net and your wife asks if she can look up something real quickly on the net. You get off the PC and she start using your Firefox browser. After she finished if she decides out of curiosity to look at your bookmarks. If you are using the smart folders she can see immediately see your most visited sites, and which sites you recently bookmarked. What if you were planning to cheat and just recently bookmarked Ashley Madison. LOL.

Anyway that was just an example. She could of seen any website you recently bookmarked. I'm sure the Uni-Bomber or Bin laden would not have appreciated the smart folder either if they showed their most visited sites. LOL

 

Here's an actual example of why this is a privacy issue.
Last night my wife was browsing on her account and left the PC without switching users. Just by looking at her Firefox browser I was able to tell her what sites she visited the most and what she recently bookmarked. She actually got mad at me briefly and asked me if I was spying on her. I said no and I showed her the smart folders. She had me delete her smart folders immediately.

However I did not delete them from kids Firefox on their accounts. I will use the smart folder to "monitor" my kids.

 

If you're logged on in your wife's account it only makes sense that you can see her bookmarks and history. The browser can't possibly know that you're using it and not your wife. Using the same logic you could say the OS has a privacy issue because you can browse through all of her files when you're in her account.

 

Hi, gugarci. A scenario such as above would never happen in my house. First I would have logged out or had my wife switch to her account. At the very least I would have said "sure hon, what do you want to look up" with me in control. We have a few rules here, no sharing of accounts, even for a "quick looks". No snooping allowed, if someone forgets to logout, log them out; which doesn't happen much. My kids have learned, failure to abide by these rules means loss of privileges.