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History while syncing - it has got only 2 months, why is that?!

  • 8 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 111 views
  • Last reply by cor-el

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Good morning, I am using Firefox since 14 years, and all the time it has been my favourite Internet Browser and I advised every friend of mine to choose this internet browser. But I am afraid it's gonna change soon. I lost my laptop, it was stolen. I store my history from a couple of years, bookmarks, saved passwords. I had a backup by MozBackup on May 2019. On December I copied a profile as it was written in your guides: (https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/back-and-restore-information-firefox-profiles) I copied everything from: %APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\ I hadn't investigate what is inside. And after i bought a new laptop I had many problems with Firefox, can someone explain me please: 1. I couldn't login to Sync, due i hadn't remembered my password - ok its my fault, but when i wanted to reset i would lose all my data?! Why is that? I can understand due to its encrypted but... Luckly after some combination i recovered my password. 2. So i copied my profile as it was written in your guide, and i hadn't investigate what is inside. Now when i tried to copy my whole profile its not working, why? Well, i checked and there were no file: places.sqlite . I have no clue why, so my backup from December is lost. 3. You informed people about Syncing, why there is nowhere information that you syncing history, yes, but only 2 months??!! You claim that we will have bookmarks, saved passwords, cache and history yes thats true, but history for only 8 weeks..... I understand that it has many bytes to store, but it should be somewhere information about it! If i would knew that i would be more prepared for lost, and did more often proper backup by MozBackup. I feel now very frustrated about this situation, and first time after 14 years I'm very, very disappointed with Firefox. Can someone explain me please, why is that? Thank you for reply! Kind regards

Good morning, I am using Firefox since 14 years, and all the time it has been my favourite Internet Browser and I advised every friend of mine to choose this internet browser. But I am afraid it's gonna change soon. I lost my laptop, it was stolen. I store my history from a couple of years, bookmarks, saved passwords. I had a backup by MozBackup on May 2019. On December I copied a profile as it was written in your guides: (https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/back-and-restore-information-firefox-profiles) I copied everything from: %APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\ I hadn't investigate what is inside. And after i bought a new laptop I had many problems with Firefox, can someone explain me please: 1. I couldn't login to Sync, due i hadn't remembered my password - ok its my fault, but when i wanted to reset i would lose all my data?! Why is that? I can understand due to its encrypted but... Luckly after some combination i recovered my password. 2. So i copied my profile as it was written in your guide, and i hadn't investigate what is inside. Now when i tried to copy my whole profile its not working, why? Well, i checked and there were no file: places.sqlite . I have no clue why, so my backup from December is lost. 3. You informed people about Syncing, why there is nowhere information that you syncing history, yes, but only 2 months??!! You claim that we will have bookmarks, saved passwords, cache and history yes thats true, but history for only 8 weeks..... I understand that it has many bytes to store, but it should be somewhere information about it! If i would knew that i would be more prepared for lost, and did more often proper backup by MozBackup. I feel now very frustrated about this situation, and first time after 14 years I'm very, very disappointed with Firefox. Can someone explain me please, why is that? Thank you for reply! Kind regards

Chosen solution

Posted today by another contributor: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1279256#answer-1288007

"Firefox Sync can only sync up to 5000 history items and it will not sync history items that are older than 60 days."

Read this answer in context 👍 1

All Replies (8)

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1. That is the way that a Sync account works with a password Reset. User data that is contained on the Sync server is encrypted, and the "encryption key" is derived from the password for the account. A new password creates a new "key" which renders all the saved data useless; a BLOB that can't be decrypted so that data is deleted from the server.

2. MozBackup was a 3rd party utility, which hasn't been supported or updated for a good number of years. http://mozbackup.jasnapaka.com/ Looks like the last update for MozBackup was released on May 6th, 2012. In the last 8 years Firefox has been drastically changed, and in recent years those changes have extended to the Profile folder files which what MozBackup deals with.

3. The size of how much Browsing History is saved on Sync is dependent upon a number of variables; the ultimate size would be the amount of data, not "calendar time". Bookmarks data storage rarely is an issue; never seen an exact "count" mentioned but anecdotally speaking my guess is well into the tens of thousands for desktop / laptop Firefox versions.

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the-edmeister said

1. That is the way that a Sync account works with a password Reset. User data that is contained on the Sync server is encrypted, and the "encryption key" is derived from the password for the account. A new password creates a new "key" which renders all the saved data useless; a BLOB that can't be decrypted so that data is deleted from the server. 2. MozBackup was a 3rd party utility, which hasn't been supported or updated for a good number of years. http://mozbackup.jasnapaka.com/ Looks like the last update for MozBackup was released on May 6th, 2012. In the last 8 years Firefox has been drastically changed, and in recent years those changes have extended to the Profile folder files which what MozBackup deals with. 3. The size of how much Browsing History is saved on Sync is dependent upon a number of variables; the ultimate size would be the amount of data, not "calendar time". Bookmarks data storage rarely is an issue; never seen an exact "count" mentioned but anecdotally speaking my guess is well into the tens of thousands for desktop / laptop Firefox versions.

Thank you for your reply! Regarding no. 1 ok i understand, its encrypted, so this is the reason, why we resetting password and losing whole data. I accept this understanding. Regarding no. 2 ok, but i used in 2019 on May backup by MozBackup, and it worked, instead of copying my whole profile (as was suggested by Firefox) in December and my coped profile don't know why was missed with places.sqlite. Now i have a gap in my history beetwen May - December... - but anyway it's half my fault, becuase i trusted you and blindly copied profile, and didn't check exactly which files are response for history, passwords, cache etc... so it's kind of my fault... Regarding no. 3 why there is nowhere information about sync time? Firefox says that Sync allow you to:

Firefox Sync lets you share your bookmarks, browsing history, passwords and other browser data between different devices, and send tabs from one device to another.

Why there is no information about store history, but only for 2 months, or no, wait a sec, we store your browsing history but it depends on our server, how much data you got there. Why there is no information about it? after reading this quote i assume that you have my browsing history, however you don't. Why?

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Hello,

As the-edmeister clarified, the sync service retains a certain amount of data for each user. With regards to sync, Mozilla does not provide:

  • any guarantees about uptime
  • any guarantees about performance
  • any guarantees about data retention

This (or a similar) disclaimer is contained in the documentation, the wiki, and in several other places.

While I understand that the restrictions are not obvious from promotional materials, I do not believe that they contradict these points.

Hopefully this clarifies things a bit!

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Matthew Thomas said

Hello, As the-edmeister clarified, the sync service retains a certain amount of data for each user. With regards to sync, Mozilla does not provide:
  • any guarantees about uptime
  • any guarantees about performance
  • any guarantees about data retention
This (or a similar) disclaimer is contained in the documentation, the wiki, and in several other places. While I understand that the restrictions are not obvious from promotional materials, I do not believe that they contradict these points. Hopefully this clarifies things a bit!

Hey Thomas, Thank you for your reply! Maybe when you go deeper and deeper, then yes, you will find answer how long your history browser will be stored. But in that way, we should check all the time all information that are provided by a manufactures? We should trust them, not aware of them that are trying to cheat on us or hide some informations. I understand that Firefox didn't wrote 2 months history browser, cause it's promotional materials, but i think its indirectly, fooling your users. It's not fair. How many people are thinking that you will store whole history? I guess most of them. It's marketing trick. I am really dissapointed,, frustrated about this, i feel cheated by a company that i had trusted for almost 14 years. I am sorry, but I need to think about it, but I am not sure there will be place for you Firefox on my disk. I would like to choose a company that says it - does it.

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I will preface my comments by informing you that "we" don't work for Mozilla, we are other users who volunteer our time here to help other users solve their issues with Firefox.

szymonkrawiec said

Hey Thomas, Thank you for your reply! Maybe when you go deeper and deeper, then yes, you will find answer how long your history browser will be stored. But in that way, we should check all the time all information that are provided by a manufactures? We should trust them, not aware of them that are trying to cheat on us or hide some informations. I understand that Firefox didn't wrote 2 months history browser, cause it's promotional materials, but i think its indirectly, fooling your users. It's not fair. How many people are thinking that you will store whole history? I guess most of them. It's marketing trick. I am really dissapointed,, frustrated about this, i feel cheated by a company that i had trusted for almost 14 years. I am sorry, but I need to think about it, but I am not sure there will be place for you Firefox on my disk. I would like to choose a company that says it - does it.

You are being disingenuous with those statements.

  • That stolen laptop that may have been using Sync, but did you even try connecting to Sync to get your data from the Sync server? You made no mention of trying to do that.
  • Making a 'stretch' by assuming you did that, perhaps the person who found that laptop went into Firefox and 'he' deleted your Sync data before you had a chance to connect a new computer to your Sync account?
  • You mention recovering a MozBackup file from May 2019 which is missing your data from the to (what?) Feb 2020 missing from your MozBackup file. Then you are upset that some of your older data is missing? Osmosis is not a feature of Firefox or Sync.
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the-edmeister said

I will preface my comments by informing you that "we" don't work for Mozilla, we are other users who volunteer our time here to help other users solve their issues with Firefox. szymonkrawiec said
Hey Thomas, Thank you for your reply! Maybe when you go deeper and deeper, then yes, you will find answer how long your history browser will be stored. But in that way, we should check all the time all information that are provided by a manufactures? We should trust them, not aware of them that are trying to cheat on us or hide some informations. I understand that Firefox didn't wrote 2 months history browser, cause it's promotional materials, but i think its indirectly, fooling your users. It's not fair. How many people are thinking that you will store whole history? I guess most of them. It's marketing trick. I am really dissapointed,, frustrated about this, i feel cheated by a company that i had trusted for almost 14 years. I am sorry, but I need to think about it, but I am not sure there will be place for you Firefox on my disk. I would like to choose a company that says it - does it.

You are being disingenuous with those statements.

  • That stolen laptop that may have been using Sync, but did you even try connecting to Sync to get your data from the Sync server? You made no mention of trying to do that.
  • Making a 'stretch' by assuming you did that, perhaps the person who found that laptop went into Firefox and 'he' deleted your Sync data before you had a chance to connect a new computer to your Sync account?
  • You mention recovering a MozBackup file from May 2019 which is missing your data from the to (what?) Feb 2020 missing from your MozBackup file. Then you are upset that some of your older data is missing? Osmosis is not a feature of Firefox or Sync.

Hello the-edmeister Thank you for your reply! Apologies for delay with reply, i have noticed it recently. Regarding:

  • That stolen laptop that may have been using Sync, but did you even try connecting to Sync to get your data from the Sync server? You made no mention of trying to do that.

Yes ofcourse i did, after i sync to my new laptop i received history from 2 months only.

  • Making a 'stretch' by assuming you did that, perhaps the person who found that laptop went into Firefox and 'he' deleted your Sync data before you had a chance to connect a new computer to your Sync account?

Impossible, i had Bitlocker, all my drives were encrypted, noone except me know my password, so this argument falls

  • You mention recovering a MozBackup file from May 2019 which is missing your data from the to (what?) Feb 2020 missing from your MozBackup file. Then you are upset that some of your older data is missing? Osmosis is not a feature of Firefox or Sync.

Ok maybe i wasn't precise. So: I had my backup through MozBackup to May 2019. After that i did copy of my profile but there was miss file places.sqlite (i didn't notice it so i completely lost my data - still last my backup from May2019 ) I had stolen my laptop on January. After I connected to a new laptop and sync i have: January 2020, December 2019 - 2months and some years until May 2019. So im missing June - November.

Anyway i think there is nothing i can do so... i must accept the loss, and... do more backups :) Thank you anyway for trying to help! Appreciate that :)

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Chosen Solution

Posted today by another contributor: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1279256#answer-1288007

"Firefox Sync can only sync up to 5000 history items and it will not sync history items that are older than 60 days."

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Note that there is even an upload limit for 30 days (60 days is the TTL (expire) setting).

async getAllIDs() { let urls = await PlacesSyncUtils.history.getAllURLs({ since: new Date(Date.now() - THIRTY_DAYS_IN_MS), limit: MAX_HISTORY_UPLOAD, });


Synced tabs expire already after a week (7 days).