Firefox Sync: Keep Your Firefox In Sync

Firefox Sync is an add-on formerly marked as Mozilla Weave allows users to synchronize the bookmarks, passwords, browsing history, preferences, filled forms  and opened tabs(up to last 25 tabs) with another installation of Firefox in another netbook or on a mobile phone. Firefox sync usually stores the data on Mozilla servers, but the data’s are highly encrypted so that the user with privilege can only access information.

To use Firefox sync user should install and create an account on desktop installation of Firefox and then user should enter the sync information on mobile device. Two different synchronization servers are provided by Mozilla Firefox to increase the use of Firefox sync add-on. One is Weaver server 1.0 which is used for large installations and business related works. Another one is Weaver Minimal Server for general users to share the data. IT is mainly designed for home use or data sharing between friends and family.

How does it work?

The synchronization of data between two netbooks or from netbook to mobile phone is done using a secret phrase. Initially, Mozilla Firefox receives username and password from the user for Firefox sync account after that, it asks to enter a secret phrase to encrypt the data in Firefox server. This secret phrase acts as gateway to store and retrieve the information from the Firefox server. After creating the account, Firefox sever automatically starts receiving the information about bookmarks, history, recently opened tabs, passwords, URL links etc. By providing the username, password and secret phrase either from mobile phone or  netbook (which should be enabled with Firefox sync), the browser will grant to receive and replace the data from server.

How Firefox synchronization is different form Google chrome?

Google Chrome:

• Google chrome uses real-time communication to push the data, causing changes to be reflected in a matter of seconds in all connected browser instances.
• It uses XMPP-based protocol to achieve synchronization events. For encrypting the data, Google uses protobuf (Protocol buffers) an open binary-serialized format in which “proto” documents is applied to describe the structure of the data that will be transmitted.
• One of the downside of chrome’s sync events is to make easy-readable of data through small devices such as mobile, palm devices etc. The bookmarked data are moved to google docs who cannot be accessible unless the mobile is installed with GData APIs.

Firefox:

• The Firefox sync is built upon open, simple and powerful REST API. The user API enables account creation, authentication and authorization and account-related stuffs. The syncAPI is designed to handle data storage and data retrieval.
• Firefox released the code as an open-source including the use of server, which provides an option to users to customize the sync events and to use own servers to handle the data.
• It is mainly focused on privacy of user’s data. It uses different encryption algorithms to store the data. For symmetric cryptographic algorithms AES with 256-bit key is implemented. For asymmetric cryptographic algorithms RSA with 2048 bit key is used.
• These encryption algorithms are considered to make sure that even the operator of Firefox sync can’t get any access to user’ data.