Show of hands — how many of you with the same setup are about to examine your computer to check up on your significant other?
This privacy flaw has caused my fiancé and I to break-up after having dated for 5 years.
Basically, we share one computer but under separate Windows XP user accounts. We both use Mozilla Firefox — well, he used to use it more than I do but now we don’t really use it. The privacy flaw is this: when he went to log-in under his dating sites (jdate.com, swinglifestyle.com, adultfriendfinder.com, etc.), Mozilla promptly asks whether or not he’d like Firefox to save the passwords for him. He chose never, obviously. However, when he logged off his user account, and I logged onto my Windows XP account X amount of days later, I decided to use Firefox because hey — it loaded everything much more efficiently, was better to work on with website designs and is a lot more stable than IE7beta2.
Firefox prompted whether or not I’d like it to save my password for logging into my website. I chose never and changed my mind. I went into the Password Manager to change the saved password option from Never to Always and that’s when I saw all these other sites that had been selected as “Never Save Password.” Of course, those were sites I had never visited or could ever dream of visiting.
Then I realized who, how and what… and sh*t hit the fan. Your browser does not efficiently respect the privacy of different users for one system.
Well, DUH!!! I can’t decide who is stupider. Him for thinking that his online activities would be invisible, or her for not knowing that if he setup the machine with seperate passworded user accounts, it’s because he doesn’t want her looking over his shoulder. Then these two nimrods blame Firefox for the break up. Hillarious!
Does this mean she’s back on the market? đ
Computers (at least for adults) are like toothbrushes; everybody should have their own.
“Reported: 2006-03-17”
What’s next? A story about the release of Firefox 2?
Guys are so good at faking relationships. I’d venture to say she wasn’t a triple input and he was looking elsewhere. She probably has crows feet from saying, “suck what?” I’d say, thank you FireFox!
Don’t blame Firefox. Use the same version of the Firefox on Linux and you won’t be able to see other users settings. Lack of privacy is due to the MS OS built with multiple users as a second thought.
Special Ed said: “Guys are so good at faking relationships”
Girls never fake anything, right honey? Honey????
Don’t blame Firefox… blame the idiot for going to those sites in the first place. Nice society we live in…. when we hide things from our spouse and get caught… we blame the thing that got us caught. How about taking some responsibility here folks.
If he was going to all these othe sites, why didnt he just break up with her? hats whats stupid about men. He’d have a much easier time cheating on his gf if he DIDNT HAVE ONE IN THE FIRST PLACE
Cheaters always get caught eventually. They’re just not that smart.
@dusan maletic
If you read the ticket a bit more, you’d find out that the separate user accounts weren’t actually separate to begin with; they were sharing an account: he was using Firefox, she wasn’t. Then they switched to separate accounts, and she re-installed Firefox. Basically, the OS was working as designed. Granted, the users’ mental model didn’t match what was the computer was doing…
Had the same steps been taken, the results would have been the same on Linux/Solaris/Mac OS X.
Got what he deserved. Have the courage to step out of the safety of your relationship if you want to play out of the sandbox, buddy.
Somebody got caught with his hand in the cookie jar and is blaming Nabisco.
This article is flawed – Firefox is _not_ the cause for this couples break-up – their issues in their relationship are.
The title should be “Couple breaks up due to finding evidence of cheating via Firefox flaw” or something like that.
Regards,
Shane.