Sync code that expires?

[vincen]

Hi

Just brand new user with Brave and quite like it already
I’m trying to use the sync feature but not sure to understand properly everything:
I have installed Brave on my main computer (desktop Debian 11) before installing it on my other devices.

• if I understand it well, to use the sync feature, I have to activate it on first device, it’ll generate a passphrase that I can use then on all my devices to sync right ?

• Why when I try to use the passphrase on an other device it tells me the passphrase has expired ?

Thanks for clarification

Vincèn

[Saoiray]

@vincen

if I understand it well, to use the sync feature, I have to activate it on first device, it’ll generate a passphrase that I can use then on all my devices to sync right ?

Correct.

@vincen

Why when I try to use the passphrase on an other device it tells me the passphrase has expired ?

Because the code changes daily. This was added because people had accidentally shared screenshots of their sync codes or even did a copy/paste publicly. Brave early on had even done screenshots of one on a spoof account and had it on a FAQ, to which people were adding their devices to that chain rather than following instructions.

So they and the security team discussed it and decided they’d make it change daily so as to try to better protect devices. It’s not quite flawless because there was a lot of people who were using the code like a backup and who had been complaining. So you end up with the situation as I talk about at Sync is not a backup where they add a way to make old codes work. But that’s supposed to be disappearing again here in the future. We just don’t know an ETA for it.

[vincen]

@Saoiray

So they and the security team discussed it and decided they’d make it change daily so as to try to better protect devices. It’s not quite flawless because there was a lot of people who were using the code like a backup and who had been complaining. So you end up with the situation as I talk about at Sync is not a backup where they add a way to make old codes work. But that’s supposed to be disappearing again here in the future. We just don’t know an ETA for it.

Thanks a lot for clarification and explanations I think I got all details now And basically if you don’t have anymore a running instance of Brave somewhere and sync’ed you loose your sync access and its data !

[Saoiray]

Yep, basically. At least it’s the way we’re supposed to be thinking of it so we don’t risk losing anything permanently. Just don’t forget that things like passwords and bookmarks probably should be exported every once in a while and saved to a flash drive or something if you want a more secure method of making sure they won’t be lost. This is particularly the case if you’re only using one device.

[vincen]

@Saoiray

Yep, basically. At least it’s the way we’re supposed to be thinking of it so we don’t risk losing anything permanently. Just don’t forget that things like passwords and bookmarks probably should be exported every once in a while and saved to a flash drive or something if you want a more secure method of making sure they won’t be lost. This is particularly the case if you’re only using one device.

Thanks for clarifications and yep credentials I use Bitwarden so I use sync only for bookmarks and tabs (that I backup from time to time in a file !). Unhappy I have not been able to use sync a long time as now each time I restart Brave it complains it can’t access storage on my system (Debian 11 with KDE Plasma).
Help on Brave website is quite wrong for Linux users with that problem (looks to be a copy/paste of Mac OSX explanations…
Will follow up the githab bug report about it: https://github.com/brave/brave-browser/issues/30167 to wait for solution from devs