1444979 - Last sync time on iOS firefox is wrong

Status: NEW

(Firefox for iOS :: Sync, defect, P3)

Description

[Vlad Filippov (:vladikoff)]

Moving bug from https://github.com/mozilla/fxa/issues/231 

TL;DR: iOS client says it successfully "Syncing/Synced" in several cases:

* if you are underground in a subway with no Internet
* if you disconnected the device from FxA Settings on another device

Ryan Feeley has more info on this as well.

From sync fest notes:

"""
Auth token is refreshed every 12 hours so browser isn't checking if it was disconnected. There may be a way to send a push to remotely disconnect the device so it doesn't take the 14 hours to know. Need to confirm that it has the same behavior on Android.

This was originally filed as a Firefox iOS sync bug, but bug was closed with following comment: This is the expected behavior: the device is indeed syncing, regardless of what you did on accounts.firefox.com, so the timestamp is advancing. It will continue to successfully sync until its cached credentials expire, at which point it will fail to get more from FxA, and will then report an error to the user.

You might consider filing a bug in the Server: Sync component, and/or in FxA, to introduce the coupling required to forcibly lock out devices -- at present there's no real link like that between FxA and the identity-attached service (Sync), so this is not an instantaneous process. The same thing happens in a password change situation, IIRC: it takes a few minutes before a device with a stale password is locked out.

Push would help with timeliness, but push isn't 100% reliable, and it's opt-in for iOS users, and so it can be little more than advisory.
"""