Is this behavior expected? I would imagine it would be a privacy violation in a multi-user system. I thought they had some sort of encryption for hiding the sites that I visit.

BTW, FF does not do this on private mode. But still it is concerning, that any program can know about the sites I visit just by looking at ~/.mozilla/profile/storage/default.

  • observantTrapezium@lemmy.ca
    13·
    3 days ago

    still it is concerning, that any program can know about the sites I visit

    As other noted, that’s the case in Linux, by default all processes are equal, so if your shell process can access a file, the Firefox process can access that file.

    But there are in fact many ways to sandbox processes and prevent exactly what you are worried about. One way is to install applications via Flatpak (or Snap), that can limit what files the app can see, while still running as your user.

    If there is an app you need and don’t trust that’s not available as a flatpak (or snap), there are ways to sanbox it manually. It does require some tinkering, but people can help you on !linux@lemmy.ml

    • Hirom@beehaw.org
      1·
      1 day ago

      That’s true of Windows, any process running as the same user can read Firefox data files, probably its memory too. Malware do that, and that’s why people try hard to avoid malware with AV, security fixes, sandboxing, hardening, education, …

      There is better sandboxing support on Linux, at least on the tooling side. It’s relatively easy to use firejail to sandbox every program that interacts with the network. Last time I looked I couldn’t find an equivalent on Windows that’s freely available. The “Windows Sandbox” thing is the closest but it’s fairly heavy and inconvenient. Unlike firejail it doesn’t come with profiles tailored for various popular software.