Deleting bookmarks after unsyncing a device
I am going to return my new laptop - many issues - and have a question about the synced FF account on it. I want to be sure that none of my stored passwords and bookmarks in FF that are currently synced to my other computer remain visible if I unsync the two.
Once I unsync - or disconnect - can I then delete the passwords on the computer that is being returned? Will that have any effect on passwords saved on the one I am going to continue using?
I also plan to uninstall FF and delete the profile - will that be enough to be sure no one can reactivate it and gain access to my information that was synced?
Thanks!
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Step one: Open the sync settings and remove the device in question.
https://accounts.firefox.com/settings
Step two: Delete anything you don't want others to find.
Your Firefox profiles. your computer account.
After, use a utility that scrubs such data.
To expand on one point in Fred's reply:
Your profile data is stored under this path:
- C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles
To make it visible: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/14201/windows-show-hidden-files
More information about profile folders in this article: Profiles - Where Firefox stores your bookmarks, passwords and other user data.
Thanks to you both! So I would do that on the computer that I am going to return? Hopefully it will be able to boot up again - that was the issue to begin with. That sounds like it will be enough to delete things, but can you recommend a data scrubbing utility as well?
Thanks again!
And one additional question - will it be enough to delete the profile and uninstall - or should I actually delete the FF stored passwords first? Not sure what effect that might have on the FF that I do want to keep using.
Thanks!
If you have haven't already, you need to disconnect from your Firefox Account before making any deletions through the user interface since those will be Sync'd. Once you delete the profile folder from disk, Firefox cannot run in that profile any more, so it cannot sync anything from it.
Great - thanks so much! And there are no restore points so once it is all deleted, there should be no way for someone to roll it back and reactivate that, correct?
Thanks again!
I'm sure there are no guarantees about deleted data recovery. You can use a secure erasure tool to reduce the potential for recovery of deleted files.
Keep in mind that with NTFS formatted hard drives on Windows there is merely a delete flag set in the MFT (Master File Table) and no info about used clusters is cleared, so removing the delete flag is sufficient to restore a deleted file. Of course there is no guarantee that clusters haven't been reused. Only by overwriting all clusters used by a file (i.e. a secure wipe on the hard drive) can you be sure that files cannot be restored.