Sync data lost if profile data cleared by accident
Categories
(Firefox :: Sync, defect)
Tracking
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People
(Reporter: FredMcD, Unassigned)
References
Details
User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64; rv:54.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/54.0
Steps to reproduce:
Sometimes, a users profile data is lost by accident or whatever.
Actual results:
When re-connecting to sync, the servers think that data was removed
and so clears that data from the servers.
Expected results:
Can sync be set up so that if a lot of data is removed,
the servers will confirm removing its own data?
Note: I found that changing the Device Name before logging into sync
will make the servers think this is a new member.
Users are told sync is not meant as a backup. But just the same . . .
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Comment 2•2 years ago
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The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'Toolkit::Startup and Profile System' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please revert this change in case you think the bot is wrong.
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Comment 3•2 years ago
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Can you clarify how profile data is lost in this case?
Profile data can be lost, corrupted in any number of ways. If the user restores Firefox
and tries to log into sync, the Device Name may be the same as it was before.
So the servers think the data was removed and removes its data as well.
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Updated•2 years ago
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Updated•2 years ago
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Comment 5•2 years ago
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(In reply to FredMcD from comment #4)
Profile data can be lost, corrupted in any number of ways. If the user restores Firefox
and tries to log into sync, the Device Name may be the same as it was before.
So the servers think the data was removed and removes its data as well.
Sync doesn't actually work like that, so there should be no problem in that scenario. A few strange things might happen when the names are shown in the UI (eg, we might only show that name once, which may or may not be the device you expect) but no synced data will be removed in that case. Notice also that nothing stops you from explicitly naming different devices with the same name which is the same scenario.
About the only time we drop synced data entirely is when the account is deleted or your password is reset - are you sure neither of these happened? Otherwise, can you please explain the steps to reproduce this in more detail?
(In reply to Mark Hammond [:markh] [:mhammond] from comment #5)
Sync doesn't actually work like that, so there should be no problem in that scenario.
I don't know one way or another. All I can report is many users who had lost their data
tried connecting to sync to try restoring that data, only to find nothing.
BTW: I was reporting issues from the support forum. Not problems I had.
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Comment 7•2 years ago
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(In reply to FredMcD from comment #6)
I don't know one way or another. All I can report is many users who had lost their data
tried connecting to sync to try restoring that data, only to find nothing.BTW: I was reporting issues from the support forum. Not problems I had.
Can you please provide links? The only way we know that data is lost in these scenarios is a password reset, and the password reset page actually warns against this (although it's not uncommon for users to skip over that, then complain later that the warning wasn't prominent enough, which is possibly a valid criticism). See also bug 1600212.
Can you please follow up with some of the users you were reporting on behalf of? Just some anecdotes with no way of clarifying what actually happened isn't actionable.
(In reply to Mark Hammond [:markh] [:mhammond] from comment #7)
Can you please provide links?
Sorry, none of them have posted of late.
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Comment 9•2 years ago
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Fair enough - please feel free to reopen if you obtain anything actionable.
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Comment 10•2 years ago
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User lost sync data when adding a new system to the sync;
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1362514
All my history of bookmarks is being wiped out!
I got a new desktop machine recently . . .
Then.. on all my other machines, one by one, when I login to them, it is ERASING my bookmarks and leaving nothing !!
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Comment 11•2 years ago
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Thanks for reporting Fred. I note in your reply to that issue that you again mentioned the device name being relevant and that they must ensure the new name is unique or Sync might be confused about which device is which. Please note that information is completely and 100% incorrect. It would be great if you stopped giving that answer in SUMO discussions because it is significantly misleading.
In that particular case, the user did a "restore" of their bookmarks. It's not clear exactly what happened, but it sounds like they successfully restored a backup of a new profile. It is this restore that triggered the problem - the newly restored bookmarks are sync'd between all the devices. In this particular scenario, the user didn't really want to perform that restore, so the behaviour isn't desired. However, if that restoration was intentional (ie, they really did want to go back to a very few number of bookmarks), the behaviour would be exactly correct.
Firefox does keep regular backups, so they should check their other profiles to see if such a backup exists and can be restored from. If they then perform another restore, then that restore will be sync'd and all devices should then end up with the same bookmarks as restored.
Description
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