Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

(Yes I'm one of those) Is it possible for me to provide mozilla with personal information to bypass account decryption?

  • 2 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 5 views
  • Last reply by cor-el

more options

Sup!

So I had to perform an emergency reinstallation of windows on my laptop and silly me only backed up documents and photos and such. I use firefox for a lot of stuff. Got lots of bookmarks and saved passwords on my sync account. And now like many others I'm looking for a way to login to my sync account without having to "reset" it which I've been told deletes all my data for security purposes. I'm fine with that. Happy it's safe. However, there's a possibility that both the sync account along with my registered email's password was used by the password generator which complicates things. I can reset the email password however since it's gmail.

I am aware that my data is encrypted WITH the password I used at account creation. However, just a shot in the dark here anyway and see if there is a way to recover the sync account. Thanks <3

Sup! So I had to perform an emergency reinstallation of windows on my laptop and silly me only backed up documents and photos and such. I use firefox for a lot of stuff. Got lots of bookmarks and saved passwords on my sync account. And now like many others I'm looking for a way to login to my sync account without having to "reset" it which I've been told deletes all my data for security purposes. I'm fine with that. Happy it's safe. However, there's a possibility that both the sync account along with my registered email's password was used by the password generator which complicates things. I can reset the email password however since it's gmail. I am aware that my data is encrypted WITH the password I used at account creation. However, just a shot in the dark here anyway and see if there is a way to recover the sync account. Thanks <3

All Replies (2)

more options

Resetting the sync password, or changing its e-mail or password, will remove all data from the servers. The username and password are used to create the encryption.

This is a security feature.


Set up the new Firefox installation. But, Do Not Connect to sync yet.

Once the rest of the browser is taken care of, Type about:preferences#sync<enter> in the address bar. Look for Device Name and change it to something else. This will let the sync servers think this is a new device.


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

[v57+] https://accounts.firefox.com/settings

https://accounts.firefox.com/signin

more options

That is not possible. If you do not know the password and also do not have a recovery key then your only option is to reset the password and that means you lose data stored on the Sync server.

Note that Sync isn't designed to be used as a backup, but is merely meant to sync data between connected devices. You should always backup your personal data locally.

See also: