Hi, what permissions do you have on the work computer ? As uninstalling and deleting your Profile would work since you have disconnected the work computer to Sync.

• https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiles-where-firefox-stores-user-data

Or delete your Profile and see if that works when you create another.

• https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-firefox-profiles

No idea why it turned up on your work computer other than you logged into Firefox Account which there is no reason to do so. So this would have had to be self initiated to get on there.

Thanks for responding. I can confidently say I've never logged into my Firefox account from work, and rarely from any of my other computers. If so, it was totally inadvertent. But it's a viable hypothesis. Is there any way Firefox sync could gain access to my work computer, maybe via email, as unlikely that may be. As I explained in my post, when I first did the Firefox sync brave new world thing, initially my work computer showed up as one of my synced machines, which I never instructed sync to do, but there it was of it's own accord.

At that point I immediately followed the instructions (at least I thought I did) to delete that machine from the account. Up until yesterday it appeared to have worked. For some inexplicable reason it showed up again yesterday.

There are a couple of disturbing points here. First, how did a computer I never included in my sync account show up in the first place, and secondly, why would the Firefox screen/data from my home computer suddenly become the home screen (or whatever the proper terminology is) on another computer when I start Firefox to access the internet, which I do routinely?

(I apologize if I'm not describing this clearly or using exactly the right terms here.)

In any case, how this phenomenon occurred, whether unbeknownst to me I somehow initiated it, or some other mysterious process, I need to find a remedy, and get my information removed for my work computer.

I've only logged into my Firefox sync account a handful of times, from any computer, and never from my work computer. All I can think of is somehow my work cell phone accessed my home network and it got passed on to the work computer. The phone is set up to sync automatically to my Outlook account at work, in other words, to my office computer. Could data be accessed and distributed in this fashion?

Thank-you for taking a look at this and apologies for the long reply. From this point, what do you suggest?

Mark

Overall, what your are describing indicates to me that your work computer was logged in to your Firefox Account at one time or another. No way that can happen without your username (FxA - Firefox Account email address) AND your FxA Password was typed into the Firefox Account Sign In page in the work computer, most likely on this internal page - about:preferences?entrypoint=menupanel#sync .

Or maybe you entered your work cell phone number on both your work computer and your personal computer when prompted after doing a Firefox update?

Bulldog_Sound said

... As I explained in my post, when I first did the Firefox sync brave new world thing, initially my work computer showed up as one of my synced machines, which I never instructed sync to do, but there it was of it's own accord. ...

To begin with, that "brave new world" scheme as part of the Firefox updates installation is in my opinion somewhat misleading in so far as too many users don't understand what is all about and just blindly enter their smart phone number and thinking that is a requirement to use or keep using Firefox on their desktop or laptop computers. To me that is a promotion to get more Firefox users for the Firefox version for their smart phones - Android and Apple iPhones - to increase market penetration of Firefox on smart phones. We have seen way too many (IMHO) users asking if that is necessary to use Firefox on laptops / desktops in this support forum, which indicates to me that message is misleading to some users.

Now keep in mind that a Firefox Account can be used for other Mozilla Services as explained here - and iirc registering to receive newsletters from Mozilla to receive many types of information from Mozilla also uses a Firefox Account: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/access-mozilla-services-firefox-accounts

That could also be the source for getting "connected" to Sync on either work or personal computers, and your work cell phone if you used the Marketplace when it was still active (I think that was shutdown awhile ago, so that is a "stretch" as the source).

Do this on your work computer -> hit the 3-bar toolbar button on the right-side of the Navigation toolbar to open the Menu Panel; and at the top of that 'drop-down hanger' do you see the email address for your personal Firefox Account?

If so, hover the cursor over that email address and read what the tooltip box that appears says. Open Sync preferences is the tooltip.

I don't know how the Firefox Account email address can be verified in that manner on the smart phone, I don't have one - I retired before they be came part of a "work toolset". But if you can figure out how to do that it might be a good idea to look and see what email address was/is used for Sync on that device, too. Might "ring a bell" and help you figure out the source.

As far as fixing your work computer to get rid of that synced data, I agree with Pkshadow to delete your Profile and start from scratch on that computer with a fresh Profile and losing whatever work data you have saved there. There is no easy way to pick out what is work and what is personal once Sync merges data from multiple devices.

Although quite honestly if your work IT dept was that concerned about data being synced to computers running on their network, they should have blocked their devices from ever getting a connection to / from the Sync servers thru the network firewall. A number of users have reported issues with Sync bit working on their work computers and when those users investigated their lack of Sync ability their sync error logs saw that Sync was blocked as an outgoing connection on the device that they were having that problem with.

Thanks again. I wrote a whole detailed reply and somehow lost it. I'll try again. The first thing I did was delete my Sync account from my work computer, but my home computer Firefox/Google screen still is what is displayed when I bring up Firefox on my work computer. So that didn't remove it from the work computer.

As to how this happened in the first place, the only hypothesis I can suggest is that somehow through my work cellphone it got onto my home network and more-or-less did this on it's own volition. I never added my work computer to my Firefox list of computers to sync up. I carry the work cell with me all the time, which means it's in my home whenever I'm not physically at work. That's kind of the point of it, unfortunately.

All that being said, and regardless of how this occurred - either by some inadvertent action on my part, or Voodoo - I've got to solve this problem and get that shit off my work computer. so I'm totally at a loss as to how to proceed.

I performed the action you suggested and no address for my Firefox account shows up, as far as I can tell. maybe because I've already deleted my entire Firefox sync account. But the information is obviously still there in some fashion because my home Firefox browser page shows up when I access the internet via Firefox on my work computer.

So that's it. any ideas for remedying this mess would be deeply appreciated.

Mark

For bookmarks there are backups in the bookmarkbackups folder that you can use to restore an older copy of your bookmarks.

The name of an automatically created JSON bookmarks backup in the bookmarkbackups folder includes a total item count (folders and separators included) and an hash value to prevent saving the same backup more than once. You also see this count in the Restore menu drop-down list.

• bookmarks-YYYY-MM-DD_<item count>_<hash>.jsonlz4.

For other files you can check in Windows Explorer if there is a previous version of the related file available.

• right-click: Properties -> Previous Versions
• https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/17119/windows-7-recover-lost-delete-files

See this article for more information:

• https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/recovering-important-data-from-an-old-profile

This can only happen if two devices were connected to the same account or possibly transferred via a third device that has been connected to different Sync accounts.

I'm clueless but I'm not sure what this has to do with my issue...

Mark

This is about restoring an older copy of a specific file to remove data that got added due to Sync, so you wouldn't have to do this manually.

Thanks. The problem being that I don't know how to do the procedure you're referring to.

Can't Firefox be wiped from the work computer and then a fresh copy downloaded on my work computer? I've already deleted my Sync account but the information still comes up when using Firefox on the work computer.

With sync, you can share the whole profile or only parts of it.

Use these links to create a new profile.

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder_-_Firefox#Navigating_to_the_profile_folder

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-firefox-profiles

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-run-firefox-when-profile-missing-inaccessible

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/back-and-restore-information-firefox-profiles

Type about:profiles<enter> in the address bar.