This last part bothered me a bit since I know how important online accounts and stuff concerning computers are to some people. How are you doing? Feel free to send a message in chat if you need to vent.

You do realise it's opensource.

You do realise ANY password you type in on your computer with internet access is accessible through various means anyway?

You do realise the bugs like Spectre ttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectre_(security_vulnerability) have been around quite a long time? and that your information has been vulnerable.

As i said, a key file is also required, non of this needs to be on your computer all the time, a simple USB stick and it's kept out of harms way. If your systems infected, then regardless of which method you use, your passwords are not safe.

Keep walking around with your eyes closed, i know the list of possibilities, and to tell me that passwords written on paper is perfectly secure is just laughable, as soon as you start typing it in, it's at risk.

Could you not just have a combination of all these? Have a password manager setup with high security on a securely locked pen drive. Then also have them written out on paper stored securely. Plus have backups, lots of backups. You could use a safe, but also have an offsite storage for things.
There isn’t a one stop shop which covers all eventualities, there needs to be various layers and mediums to try to account for as many possibilities as possible.
And yes, it may be a nuisance to write passwords out, however when you change them all once a month (I assume we are all regularly changing them on random days), you could then print it all out and mail it to your third party hence getting the backup in place.
Multiple mediums, locations, practices, plus regular changing, and of course backing up are all basic tools to trying to remain secure whilst not losing anything.
Oh, and avoiding social media sites or data sinks as they are better known, nothing will compromise you faster than trusting Zuckerburg.

True, but it's keeping an ever changing set of passwords updated. Too many backsup can leave you open aswell as too little.

Nothing is perfect, and the major flaw is the human part of it.

Offsite storage is handy, you could use a bank or whatever and stash em as valuables, but it needs updating, even a few months behind could be detrimental.

Even now my backups are older than they should be, but i don't change mine, unless i feel as though i have too, if the site admins increase the amount of characters, i'd change the password with a more secure one, but i have that many changing them monthly would be a nightmare (and to be fair, i don't see the point)

For me i keep even my email accounts pretty private, i use usernames for logins if possible rather than email, and i don't like having the same username (like for this forum) as my login, as that gives the attacker one less thing to find out.

Steam has the right idea, your username for logging in isn't public, so the attacker has to find out what my steam login username is or go via an alternative route using my email, which is one of many.





I've thought about online storage, just for say the keyfile, but even that opens up another means of access, as if they download it, you may never know they have.

I have my backup with me when i go out, but i rarely have my device plugged in unless i'm using it, so it would have to be done within a timeframe, and to be honest though my setup isn't perfect it's pretty decent.



I did use an ingame language as a code for passwords before now, and usernames for that matter, but with the amount of accounts you can have these days and various things to remember, the more awkward it is for you to access said information, the more likely it is you're going to get a little bit lazy, and it only needs to be once and you could have accidentally open access to everything you have.




It requires a balance, too inconvenient and you could start getting lazy, make mistakes, too convenient and you could pretty much be handing over your accounts on a silver platter.

So I was looking around on Windows Explorer and found something (see screenshots 1&2). Anyone know if that might help me recover some of what I lost? In fact I found TWO directories with that name. (screenshots 3&4). Of course, even if it did have some of the info I need.... I have no clue how to get it from this directory to a place where Firefox recognizes and uses it when I'm browsing.

All the info you need is here:

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

I hope this helps.

I got most of my bookmarks back!!!! No passwords, but at least I got most of my bookmarks back.

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU

You can try to manually copy the data files from your old data directory to the new one:

C:\Users\<your Windows login username>\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\

Also, if you do that, make sure to first close firefox.

Agreed, System Restore has saved my bacon in the past more then once. It's a great last resort when pretty much everything has failed.

I switched to the profile that was closest to the date when this happened... and I got all of my bookmarks (I think) back. But no passwords. Not a single one. It said the profiles store everything, including passwords, but when I switched back to that profile from before this whole mess happened, there are no passwords... or at least they're not autofilling like they used to.

Anyway, I'm way, way, way better off than I was before. Thank you so much. I don't have a clue about what my passwords are so it would've been really good if the profile had included the passwords, but maybe I can figure something out. At least now I've got links to all of my bills and financial stuff back. I couldn't remember their addresses (which isn't too big a deal as I could have searched for that) but the more important thing was I couldn't remember all of the sites I owed bills to. Every month I would just click on those bookmarks, one after another, and pay my bills.

But when this happened I realized I had no idea how many there were or what all of them were. And now I've got them all back. So there is that progress.

Anyway, thanks again.

OMG!!!! Success!!!!

I'm right back where I was before the shit storm hit!!!!!! I've got all bookmarks, passwords, history, everything looks just like it did before this whole mess happened.

OMG I can't possibly thank you enough. Whew. My stress just nose dived about 100 levels.

Please, may I gift you a game for saving my ass?

Man, I love happy endings. Glad your issue got solved, OP!

No need to, I'm just glad I could help.

Well done!
Btw please save\backup that important info also elsewhere!