1417403 - sync should show dates more than one month

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Cloud Services :: Server: Firefox Accounts, enhancement)

Description

[Dan Jacobson]

We see detailed dates up to "last sync over a month ago" and that is it.

one day, one week, one month, one year...
Why is one year folded into one month.

From a security point of view it would help if one could see years too.

Comment 1

[Mark Hammond [:markh] [:mhammond]]

(In reply to Dan Jacobson from comment #0)
> We see detailed dates up to "last sync over a month ago" and that is it.

What date are you referring to? Most places show the exact date when it was more than 6 days ago (but only the day name if less).

Also, see bug 1184265 where we hope to improve that further.

Comment 2

[Dan Jacobson]

https://accounts.firefox.com/settings/clients?service=sync
Epiphany 3.26, Debian
last sync 10 days ago
Epiphany 3.26, Debian
last sync 16 days ago
Aurora on ASUS_Z012DA
last sync a month ago
jidanni's Iceweasel on jidanni2
last sync over a month ago
jidanni's Iceweasel on jidanni6
last sync over a month ago

Comment 3

[Mark Hammond [:markh] [:mhammond]]

(In reply to Dan Jacobson from comment #2)
> https://accounts.firefox.com/settings/clients?service=sync

Ah, thanks!

Comment 4

[Dan Jacobson]

P.S., the repeated host is due to https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=790370 .

Comment 5

[Phil Booth [:pb]]

What you're seeing is an artifact of an old Firefox Accounts bug [1] that was fixed about a month ago [2]. The "over a month ago" part represents the concrete date on which we deployed the fix to that bug; we do not have accurate last-access times stored for sessions that have not been active since that date. Saying "over a month ago" is our attempt to make this unfortunate distinction clear to users. It's not ideal but it's the best / most honest statement we can make based on FxA data.

The "over a month ago" part will naturally increase with time of course, as the history for which we have accurate data increases. Soon it will be "over 2 months ago" and eventually it will be "over 1 year ago", etc and so on. So I'm not sure there's much we can do about this. It's not ideal, but all we can do now is let time pass I think. Unless anyone can suggest further improvements we could make to the messaging?

[1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1403275
[2] https://github.com/mozilla/fxa-auth-server/pull/2149

Comment 6

[Dan Jacobson]

Maybe have it say
"Over 37 days ago(?)"
"Over 43 days ago(?)"

and when they look at the next day

"Over 38 days ago(?)"
"Over 44 days ago(?)"

and when they click on the "(?)" have a message saying:

"You see we here at sync headquarters lost some data .... so that is why ... ".

Comment 7

[Dan Jacobson]

Only when all are
Over 30 days ago
Over 60 days ago
will users think it is a normal tally and not in fact a emergency tally.
Luckily that will happen only once in 30 days my way. but every day the "over one month ago" way.

Comment 8

[Dan Jacobson]

In fact you can give exact
Thu Nov 16 15:39:48 CST 2017
dates for the good ones,
And the "ago" for the damaged ones.
Eventually the damaged ones will die off one by one...

Comment 9

[Ryan Feeley [:rfeeley]]

Just like how babies’ ages are in days, week, and months, we could follow a similar pattern and use a time scale of twos:

1 second ago… 119 seconds ago…
2 minutes ago… 119 minutes ago…
2 hours ago… 47 hours ago…
2 days ago… 13 days ago…
2 weeks ago… 8 weeks ago…
2 months ago… 23 months ago…
2 years ago… 3 years ago… etc.