634
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
634 points (92.5% liked)
Firefox
17900 readers
16 users here now
A place to discuss the news and latest developments on the open-source browser Firefox
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
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.
@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.