Firefox Synch – Finally a Cloud Service I Trust With My Personal Data

You might have noticed that I am usually quite critical of cloud services that interact with my private data. What bothers me with most services is that I loose control over my data as I am no longer in charge where it is stored outside my home, how well it is protected and for what other purposes it is used. Cloud services such as my blog, for example, are excluded from this, obviously as there is no private data here.

Recently I have started using Firefox Synch to keep my bookmarks backed up and synchronized between several devices. I very much like the approach taken by Firefox Synch as all data that leaves my devices and goes through the cloud or is stored there is encrypted BEFORE it leaves my devices. This is how I like it. The cloud is used for a service but my private data is secure and only available to me.

Nothing is perfect, though, my movementts could still be tracked with the IP address given in the quite frequent synchronization requests. But then the synchronization account is not linked to my name or email address or any other personal ID so tracking me personally would require that an attacker would have to figure out the id of my synchronization account first. But I can probably life with that potential threat as that is likely to be very difficult to pull off.