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Call me paranoid but I like keeping my data private and you can learn too much about a person by data mining their bookmarks. So any non privacy destroying suggestions?

Although the info might be out of date, Foxmarks had instructions on how to use your own server.

I use foxmarks (or Xmarks, as they call themselves now) for all the web passwords that I'm willing to let Firefox remember. AES encrypted, available everywhere Firefox is. Nice. Simple. Easy and Works.

The passwords that I put in there are variations of a few basic passwords. The passwords are simple plain english words, 3 to 8 characters long, and each letter maps to a random 2 letter assignment. This map is generated by going to GRC's password generator page and taking the first two letters in the ascii printable list and assigning it to "a", the next two to "b" and so on. I then follow with the numbers. The is also a lower/alpha/number list which I do the same thing in case I run across a site that can't take special characters.

For example, when I went to the page for this post. I got the following string: "=f^9]pnLE70:uS6XYhev/ExPy%)Ax}" In this case a := "=f" b := "^9", etc. For the password base I would choose something like sea, which would then get translated into: DeE7=f I would then add a simple (ie: 2-3 char plain text easy to remember), prefix or postfix to the password for the site.

At work I keep the alphabet list printed out and taped to the bottom of the center drawer of my desk. This is secure because people would have to get past the armed guards and two locked doors to get to it. Even if this wasn't the case, they would have to know what the base password is.

For non web based passwords I use KeePassSafe. Even I don't really know what the password is for keepass, as I use both a keyfile, and a statically generated 32 character password (I use a Yubikey in static mode for this. I'm not concerned about losing the file, but if something happened to the key, I admit I'd be screwed. Mostly I use it for the geek factor. Before I got the yubikey, I used the above method with an 8 character base (and the keyfile)

I know that, at one point, I was using Google Browser Sync -- maybe there's a service like that, still?

Foxmarks.

I've thought about using that before. I will probably set it up eventually. Is there any better vetting than this though? http://blog.foxmarks.com/?p=472 Also, the bookmarks and passwords are stored on their server (as opposed to a direct computer to computer transfer), so are they encrypted on their server, or just in transit? Since you can sun your own server I would guess that someone should know if the sync file is encrypted or not, but the PC World comment they include doesn't exactly sound authoritative.

I'd really like to see some support for Foxmarks or something similar that also supports Firefox. Between 3 different computers and a half dozen or so virtual machines, keeping my bookmarks synced between all of them becomes really important, otherwise I am constantly wondering "Which computer was I using the other day when I found that page about FOO?" If they are working on extension support, than I assume this is coming as well.

This must be some sort of company record for them getting a product out of BETA. They managed to do something in a few months that many higher profile projects have not been able to do in years.

The important thing is to provide all the relevant details when you file a police report -- model, color, and most importantly serial number. If you don't file a police report, then nothing has been stolen as far as the law is concerned.

I did not have my serial number written down anywhere, but when my house was burglarized a few months ago and my Macbook Pro was stolen, Apple was able to provide me with it along with a copy of my invoice. I made sure the police report had the serial number in it, even though I did not have any special software installed for tracking it.

A few weeks later, I found a bunch of new bookmarks in my browser that I didn't recognize and I realized whatever fool had my laptop had not bothered to re-image it, and was still using my Firefox profile, which was still connected to my Foxmarks account.

So I changed them all to point to a redirect page on my own webserver, and set up a cron job to watch the logs and email me whenever it got a hit. Foxmarks dutifully synced my changes down to my stolen laptop the next time the guy opened Firefox, and suddenly I had his I.P. address. He sent it to me several times a day, and it was always from the same IP.

Now, the police in my precinct are not technical, but I called them and left a message explaining the information I had, and referencing my case number, and making it very clear that all they needed to do was get a subpoena to get the subscriber information from Comcast. It took about a week for someone to call me back to find out what the hell I was talking about, about 20 minutes on the phone for me to give him a brief "TCP/IP 101," and then about three more weeks for them to get the paperwork through the courts. But then one day the detective called me up, told me he was standing in the suspect's apartment, and asked me where to find the serial number on the laptop.

I told him how to remove the battery and find the serial number, he matched it against the police report, and I had it back a couple of hours later. The guy that was using it got charged with a felony (receiving and concealing stolen property).

All of my personal files were still on the laptop, just moved into the trash bin. Along with several pictures of the guy and his buddies mugging for the camera and throwing gang signs. (These, of course, I burned to a CD and gave to the police).

Anyway, my point is just that even though the cops are usually not remotely technical, they will follow up on this sort of thing if you are polite, take the time to explain the technology, and make sure to follow procedure by filing a detailed report as soon as your laptop is stolen.

I'll definitely be installing this software on the laptop as soon as I have a free moment -- I got lucky with Foxmarks, but it's better to be prepared than lucky.

Are are aware that other solutions exist for this problem? I use Foxmarks: http://www.foxmarks.com/

You mean like Foxmarks?

I would be great to run this on my own trusted server, and would the be only way I might run the extension.

However I don't think Google should open source it in this case. Mostly because of my own needless paranoia. (But this is Slashdot so no one will notice.)

Why? What percentage of FF's user base runs their own server? We can only guess, but probably somewhere in the realm of 0.001%. Or less. (There are 1.4 bil internet users, you do the math.) So virtually no one is going to run their own server.

What a perfect opportunity for Lucky Nice Software Co! (A division of Lazy Nefarious Software Company.) LNSC sets up a server, pays some kid a few hundred bucks to put a custom front-end on it, pays another kid the same amount to set up a professional looking web site and then a little more to advertise. Add a long EULA that says they can store and rape all of your data and you've got a profitable business for little trouble and a small amount of capital.

An -now- it looks like something my Mom might use. And because it looks nice and legitimate and has been advertised it will be several orders of magnitude more popular than your version.

Sure, software isn't unique. If one person can do it, so can another. But there is making guns, and then there is selling guns to terrorists.

And in this case, there is one good alternative and another open source initiative that could replace (and supersede) it that you can contribute to. I encourage you to.

Look into foxmarks (assuming you use firefox). It works decently well, and it has firefox 3 support. I never switched to Google's thing, because foxmarks seemed better.

http://www.foxmarks.com/

Thanks!!! I don't know why I never saw this anywhere else, I had actually downgraded to Firefox 2 over this one issue. Thank you so much, I installed it and it works perfect.

There's a beta version of Foxmarks for Firefox 3 that's now been opened.

I started using Foxmarks since Google seems to be dragging its heels with its Browser Sync extension. I'm actually finding it a lot better than Browser Sync and now I can access my bookmarks via a webpage so it's accessible from a non-Firefox browser too. It's like integrating Google Browser Sync and Google Bookmarks.

I find syncing histories a tad overboard.

I use FoxMarks for bookmark syncing across multiple FF installs. You can also log on the their website from any internet computer and access your bookmarks without installing anything. Now thats useful.

Sign up to test Foxmarks for Firefox 3 beta via...
http://blog.foxmarks.com/?p=118

First, you don't seem to have the senses to understand or even read my post in totality, and secondly, ur an AC... chuck it.. If your dumb ass gives your brain enough space to breathe, then try to understand that what a bookmark syncing addon does. Just because I visit these sites at home, or anywhere else other than my office, and also I need to have my zillions of bookmarks always on my machine, wherever I work, doesn't mean that I WASTE OFFICE TIME doing such stuff in office. Tracking softwares/ proxies/ access log reports are stuff which are and should be used for such things. Right, that you were not in place of that CTO. At least he was considerate enough to allow me to put it into his head that just being equipped to do something doesn't mean that I WILL DO IT. Surely you must be burning your balls as a CTO/CIO somewhere, trying hard to differentiate between the right and wrong.

You can get a Firefox >1.5 addon http://www.foxmarks.com/ that saves your bookmarks and preferences on Foxmark servers already.

To the best of my knowledge, Firefox does not have automatic syncing of bookmarks with a central server. There are definitely add-ons that allow it (such as foxmarks and the google toolbar (I think)).

I knew there was a reason why, when the summary implied that "everyone who uses Firefox is syncing their bookmarks," I had never heard of such a thing. From the Foxmarks Web site:

Foxmarks is a startup that goes beyond the Web 2.0 hype. The company is poised to turn search upside down by harnessing the collective intelligence of its users' bookmarks to help find desired web sites much more easily ... Foxmarks' novel search approach goes leaps and bounds beyond simple page ranking and text indexing. By combining algorithmic search with community knowledge-sharing and the wisdom of crowds, Foxmarks connects users with the sites that are most useful and relevant.

Foxmarks may be of some interest for you. Although with Google Bookmarks you probably have cross platform support.

Google browser sync