all of my bookmarks, logins etc are gone
Firefox was crashing my phone (android) all of the time (not the problem) so I uninstalled and reinstalled the app, and was assured this would not be a problem as mozilla store all logins book marks etc, on their servers and a simple sync would restore all of that. It did not. I've since discovered that in actual fact reseting your password is pretty much the same as deleting your ENTIRE account, including all of my saved logins, bookmarks etc. This is unbelievable to me. I literally cannot believe that a tech organisation as large as mozilla has no way of retrieving, or allowing me to retrieve my own data because i changed my password. That's not my account. That's an entirely new account... or is it? Please help.
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Resetting the password for the Firefox Account because you do not remember the password will remove all data stored on the Sync server because this password is used to encrypt your data before it is uploaded to the Sync server (i.e. unencrypted data never leaves the computer) and only this password or a possible recovery key can decrypt this data after a password reset.
Is that Android device the only device connected to this account because Sync is meant to sync your personal data across all connected devices and isn't meant to be used as a backup ?
I have a laptop, but I am afraid to turn it on for fear it will sync and delete my logins etc, there too. Could that be a way to recover the data, and more importantly how do I avoid auto-sync happening and thus losing any chance of recovery? Thank you.
Yeah, sync is scary. No prompts or anything. As a test... I would open Edge or Chrome, download a different version of Firefox (Beta, Dev, Nightly, or Waterfox) and sign into your account and see what happens. Make sure all the sync options are checked and to install in a different directory than your current install.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-do-i-choose-what-information-sync-firefox# https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-do-i-set-sync-my-computer#
Download Firefox version - https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/all/#product-desktop-release
Modified by jonzn4SUSE
If you use a Primary Password on the laptop then you can cancel this PP prompt to prevent Firefox from connecting to Sync.
You can copy certain files with Firefox closed from the current profile folder to backup your personal data. Note that best is to avoid restoring a full profile folder and only restore important files that are safe to restore/transfer.
- https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/back-and-restore-information-firefox-profiles
- https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiles-where-firefox-stores-user-data
- C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<profile>
- bookmarks and history: places.sqlite
- favicons: favicons.sqlite
- bookmark backups: compressed .jsonlz4 JSON backups in the bookmarkbackups folder
- cookies.sqlite for the Cookies
- formhistory.sqlite for saved autocomplete Form Data
- logins.json (encrypted logins) and key4.db (encryption key and primary password) for logins saved in the Password Manager
- cert9.db for certificates stored in the Certificate Manager
- persdict.dat for words added to the spell checker dictionary
- permissions.sqlite for Permissions and possibly content-prefs.sqlite for other website specific data (Site Preferences)
- sessionstore.jsonlz4 for open tabs and pinned tabs (see also the sessionstore-backups folder)
Modified by cor-el