Since the introduction of Firefox 7, I’ve officially switched back to the Fx browser (but not without this add-on installed, which I consider mandatory). No, I’m not telling to you dump IE, Opera or Chrome, but Fx 7 did impress me enough to switch back over to it.

A feature of Fx I used a long time ago when it was first introduced was Firefox Sync. Back when I originally tested this Mozilla flavor of cloud-based bookmark/password/tab sync, I’m not going to lie, it was awful and just didn’t work.

Being I hadn’t tried Fx Sync in a good long while, I decided to give it a go again, and now it appears that Mozilla has sync that does the job it’s supposed to do that actually works. In fact, it works pretty darned well.

Now before continuing, if you happen to use a similar cloud-based sync service such as LastPass, Xmarks or the like, I’m not telling to to switch. For whatever you use, if you like it and it works, stay with what you know.

Part of the reason I decided to start using Fx Sync is because Mozilla is one of the few that actually gets security right the first time, namely from this portion of their privacy policy:

Firefox Sync on your computer encrypts your data before sending it to us so the data isn’t sitting around on our servers in a usable form.

"Isn’t that the way other cloud-sync services work?"

No. The way Fx Sync works is that, as stated in the policy, your data is encrypted before it ever leaves your computer for the cloud. Not "after", not "during transit". Before. That’s a big deal because it means Fx Sync never sends anything out that isn’t encrypted beforehand. If what you send is intercepted during transit, that’s not an issue because data is already encrypted. Also, the data on arrival at the servers cannot be machine-read (or human-read for that matter) for the same reason.

"Aren’t you being a little paranoid?"

For bookmark sync it’s overkill, no question. But for password sync, that’s a different story; that data should be encrypted before it ever leaves your computer. If it isn’t at any point of the journey to the cloud, that’s not good at all.

It works, and it’s secure

Firefox Sync gets my official thumbs up. It is a set-it-and-forget-it type of thing that works unattended without worry, and everything is encrypted in both directions.

On a final note, again I’m not telling you to dump whatever bookmark/password sync utility you’re using for Fx Sync, but at least you know that should you want to give Sync a try, it does work smoothly without issue and privacy concerns are all met easily.

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