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Comment by wasmitnetzen | Hacker News Reader

Yes, I'm running it with the mozilla/syncserver docker image[1], but still using the hosted identity service. The setup procedure is a bit fickle, the error handling on Firefox' side is quite bad, sometimes the first sync times out when you have a larger data set, and you need to manually enable each sync type to reduce the size. But once it's up and running, I don't really have any issues.

I do hope that syncstorage-rs will become usable eventually and hopefully improve performance.

Note: contrary to your post, cookies are not synced.

[1]: https://hub.docker.com/r/mozilla/syncserver

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What is gained from self hosting the container? Are you able to sync more data than Firefox's official Sync service? Less reliance on a third party service? Would love to understand the value-add.

Their docs[0] make it seem like little would be gained from a privacy/security perspective as it seems pretty secure/private (at least to me).

[0] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-firefox-sync-keeps-...

You could put your self-hosted container in a self-hosted VPN to add a layer of protection.

But honestly, while encryption theoretically can make any data "safe" to hand to a 3rd party, it's just good "data hygiene" to keep it under your own control. If someone steals the Firefox sync database now, and some part of the encryption scheme is later broken by e.g. quantum computers, the thieves could retroactively decrypt your sync account data.

And there's also the question of metadata - when does your Firefox send data to sync, and how much? Are you sure there's nothing to glean from that?

You are making the assumption that you can secure your own instance of Sync better than Mozilla can secure theirs.

From Mozilla? Absolutely.

How likely is a scenario where Mozilla abuses their access to the stored data on the sync service but not their ability to ship code in the browser? It seems unlikely for that to have much practical benefit.

No, I am making the assumption that I can secure my own VPN better than Mozilla can secure their instance of Sync.

> If someone steals the Firefox sync database now, and some part of the encryption scheme is later broken by e.g. quantum computers, the thieves could retroactively decrypt your sync account data.

Since cookies and sensitive site data aren't a part of syncing, I guess I could see this being pertinent to your point of data being used to identify you.

That being said, if I were a malicious actor, this sounds like a really low reward if you manage to compromise/crack encrypted Firefox Sync data.

Ultimately, I agree with your point of reducing information exposure by self-hosting. My line of thought was more wondering what arguments there were on why this may or may not be worth setting up.

Am I missing something, or does using the hosted identity service defeat the whole purpose?

I guess that depends on your threat model. I want to defend against Mozilla being breached and all data getting accessed, and (legal) data mining by Mozilla. My setup doesn't defend against Mozilla going rogue, or someone getting malicious code into Firefox.

How is Mozilla being breached different from them going rogue?

A more pedestrian failure mode that occurred to me would be a simple bug, or a configuration format change causing the URL of my private sync server to be ignored. If using Mozilla auth, this would cause my data to simply be silently uploaded to Mozilla's sync server -- and I'd be unlikely to find out about it until much later. If not, it would likely cause an authentication error instead.

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