FYI: For all who say they've never seen Firefox's "Create your account" screen, I just had my desktop crash and when it came back up, Firefox displayed the page in the attached screenshot.

It sure appears that it wanted me to start from scratch as though I was a brand new FF user. I had to manually edit the "~/.mozilla/firefox/profiles.ini" file to remove several new profiles that I never asked for before I could get to a point where I had my previous bookmarks, add-ons, etc. The hell of it is that I had jumped from the 68.0.1 that I'd reverted back to -- following the 68.0.2 upgrade debacle -- to 69.0.1 and it was working just fine until my desktop crashed. Then it had to go off into the weeds about creating a new profile.

One shouldn't have to do this every time Mozilla pushes out a new release if you're not using one of their accounts to sync browsers. Mozilla doesn't seem to understand that users shouldn't have to sync this browser profile to... the same darned profile just because it's a new version of Firefox. (IMHO, they're really screwing the pooch on this.)

On the plus side: at least I've got the beginnings of a procedure to recover my working profile should Mozilla go and decide I need a new one at some random point in the future. With that pretty much in-hand, I'll mark this thread as "solved".

[smh]

Cheers...

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I can only repeat that I have never had that.
It looks to me like you're actually using FF Sync (unknowingly?).

I just had Firefox upgrade to 69.0.1 on this desktop and several Windows 'puters without seeing that screen. I've never set up a Firefox account. I don't use Sync. I've never had an upgrade munge my profile(s).

I believe all that page is telling you is that to Sync, you'll need a Firefox account. Perhaps you were syncing with an add-on or other way(?), and to continue to do so now requires an account. I'm just guessing, tho.

You can run your own self-hosted sync server:

https://mozilla-services.readthedocs...s/run-fxa.html
https://mozilla-services.readthedocs...wto-run-sync15

We were discussing this article at my LUG meeting tonight. It outlines the steps Mozilla took to protect the information of persons who choose to use Firefox sync.

You might want to read it before jumping to conclusions about Firefox sync.

2 members found this post helpful.

^ I am having difficulty separating the good stuff from the sales pitch / techno babble in that article.
To what conclusion did you and your LUG come, if it can be phrased in layman friendly terms?

To put it simply, most of us find Mozilla trustworthy, based on its track record over decades.

You don't have to create a Firefox account to use Firefox. You need one only if you want to use the features that Firefox sync offers. I've had a Firefox sync account for several years, configured to sync only my bookmarks and plugins, and it has worked as promised and has not transgressed.

I have witnessed nothing to lead me to believe that Mozilla is violating its word.

And I pay attention to this stuff. Mozilla is not Facebook nor Google and does not deserve to be tarred with their brush.

Very definitely.

No, it doesn't deserve that.
But they are certainly playing the big game, and that includes telemetry, contracts with cloudflare and whatnot.
And of course they've been using Google's malware lists for years already. "block dangerous and deceptive Content" - always UNcheckl that!
Keywords "ghacks user.js" - it is amazing how many options FF has, and how many of those are set to phoning home by default.