From Newsgroup: alt.comp.software.firefox

'Refresh' is doublespeak: deletes what you had setup including some user
data. Imagine if someone offered to 'refresh' your house, and then
demolished it and built you a mud hut without any more modern conveniences/rooms. Please remove this dangerous scam offer and make it
say what it's doing instead of pretending.
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.software.firefox

Op 02-08-2026 om 06:14 schreef David Chmelik:

'Refresh' is doublespeak: deletes what you had setup including some user data. Imagine if someone offered to 'refresh' your house, and then demolished it and built you a mud hut without any more modern conveniences/rooms. Please remove this dangerous scam offer and make it
say what it's doing instead of pretending.

It still is? I tried to warn for this a few years ago on the old Mozilla
server and it nearly got me kicked off of it by Chris.

In my experience the combination of Refresh Firefox and Firefox Sync has
always been very fragile, since day one.

If you use Refresh Firefox while connected to a Firefox Sync profile it
will start restoring seemingly random stuff from your profile after a
while, including stuff you thought you deleted years ago.

I've never used it again, make a good backup, much safer.
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.software.firefox

David,

'Refresh' is doublespeak: deletes what you had setup including some
user data.

Context ?

There are a number of refreshes that do exactly what the words stands for.

Imagine if someone offered to 'refresh' your house, and then
demolished it and built you a mud hut without any more modern conveniences/rooms.

Thats a bad analogy, hurting any point you're trying to make.

Even if it truly "deletes what you had setup" than what you would be left
with would be a newbuild, ready-to-live-in house, including rugs, furniture, washing machine and all the other conveniences.

... like, in Firefox, having created a new profile.

But a question : did you *really* run something called "refresh" - which obviously would make changes - without checking what its supposed to do
and/or making a backup first ?

Regards,
Rudy Wieser


--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.software.firefox

On Sun, 2 Aug 2026 04:14:14 -0000 (UTC), David Chmelik wrote:

'Refresh' is doublespeak: deletes what you had setup including some
user data. Imagine if someone offered to 'refresh' your house, and
then demolished it and built you a mud hut without any more modern conveniences/rooms. Please remove this dangerous scam offer and make
it say what it's doing instead of pretending.

Are you sure itrCOs not a Microsoft Windows problem?

Always worth checking, given the quality of MicrosoftrCOs updates
recently.
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.software.firefox

"R.Wieser" <address@is.invalid> Wrote in message:

David,

'Refresh' is doublespeak: deletes what you had setup including some
user data.

Context ?

There are a number of refreshes that do exactly what the words stands for.

Imagine if someone offered to 'refresh' your house, and then
demolished it and built you a mud hut without any more modern
conveniences/rooms.

Thats a bad analogy, hurting any point you're trying to make.

Even if it truly "deletes what you had setup" than what you would be left with would be a newbuild, ready-to-live-in house, including rugs, furniture, washing machine and all the other conveniences.

... like, in Firefox, having created a new profile.

But a question : did you *really* run something called "refresh" - which obviously would make changes - without checking what its supposed to do and/or making a backup first ?

I've often come across Refresh, either when I resurrect Nightly
having not used it for many months - usually to test my addons
when the addons API changes - or start up a machine I haven't
used for a long time. I get a message like "It looks like you
haven't used Firefox for a long time. Would you like to refresh
it?"

I'm pretty sure there's a 'Find out more' link, which perhaps goes
here: <https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/refresh-firefox-reset-add-ons-and-settings>

I generally say no and update via 'Help about'.
--
Remove numerics from my email address.
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.software.firefox

Dave,

I've often come across Refresh,

....

I'm pretty sure there's a 'Find out more' link, which perhaps goes
here:

That is why I started with "context ?".

The OP just assumed we would know what "Refresh" he was talking about. In relation to Firefox I can't remember having ever come across it.

But if that is the "Refresh" the OP ment and he could just follow such an
"find out more" link than its even sillier that he didn't read-up on it.

Regards,
Rudy Wieser



--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.software.firefox

"R.Wieser" <address@is.invalid> Wrote in message:

Dave,

I've often come across Refresh,

....

I'm pretty sure there's a 'Find out more' link, which perhaps goes
here:

That is why I started with "context ?".

The OP just assumed we would know what "Refresh" he was talking about. In relation to Firefox I can't remember having ever come across it.

But if that is the "Refresh" the OP ment and he could just follow such an "find out more" link than its even sillier that he didn't read-up on it.

I think I've seen it in a menu somewhere, though I don't have a PC
at hand to look. And I've seen in mentioned Firefox 'what to do
if ....' pages, among the 'if all else fails' suggestions.


Perhaps the OP will tell us more.
--
Remove numerics from my email address.
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.software.firefox

Dave,

And I've seen in mentioned Firefox 'what to do if ....' pages, among the 'if
all else fails' suggestions.

I just found the link you posted (in your previous post) as the first result when I searched for "firefox refresh" using DDG. IOW, information about it
is not hard to find.

Perhaps the OP will tell us more.

I doubt it.

His post was all about being angry because of the result he got when he did something he had no clue to what would would happen, and didn't bother to
try to find out before doing it.

I do wonder what he thought that that "refresh" option would do for him though...

Regards,
Rudy Wieser


--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.software.firefox

Op 02-08-2026 om 09:35 schreef Lawrence DrCOOliveiro:

On Sun, 2 Aug 2026 04:14:14 -0000 (UTC), David Chmelik wrote:

'Refresh' is doublespeak: deletes what you had setup including some
user data. Imagine if someone offered to 'refresh' your house, and
then demolished it and built you a mud hut without any more modern
conveniences/rooms. Please remove this dangerous scam offer and make
it say what it's doing instead of pretending.

Are you sure itrCOs not a Microsoft Windows problem?

Always worth checking, given the quality of MicrosoftrCOs updates> recently.

David is on Linux. Or at least he posted from Linux, same setup as you.
In Pan press H to check the headers, always a good plan before blaming
the OS if it isn't mentioned.
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.software.firefox

dillinger,

Are you sure it's not a Microsoft Windows problem?

...

David is on Linux. Or at least he posted from Linux, same setup as you.

In a lot less words : Yes, you are sure.

In Pan press H to check the headers, always a good plan before
blaming the OS if it isn't mentioned.

It wasn't a blame, but a question to a possibility.

Besides that, when a question - or in this case : a complaint - is posted
its upto the poster to supply all the information pertinent to it.
Assuming that "everyone knows" is not a good starting-point. Requiring
that everyone go find the user-agent in the header and from there figure out which OS it belongs to isn't a good starting-point either. Besides that he might have posted from a device other than his 'Puter ofcourse.

Point in case : I was not even sure if that "Refresh" wasn't an external program (like RegClean and its ilk).

Point in case : When I throw the whole user-agent string into DDG and I get (lots of) results related to a city, something about "Thermochemical
Tables", "Furniture And Homeware", "Pan Am Flight 103 - Wikipedia" and some other stuff, but none about a newsgroup-client. And I went down to page
six - beyond the "I'm desparate" level :-).

Quoting the whole user-agent string and trying again I get "No results
found".

Regards,
Rudy Wieser


--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.software.firefox

On Sun, 2 Aug 2026 09:27:34 +0100 (GMT+01:00), Dave Royal <dave@dave123royal.com> wrote:

I've often come across Refresh, either when I resurrect Nightly
having not used it for many months - usually to test my addons
when the addons API changes - or start up a machine I haven't
used for a long time. I get a message like "It looks like you
haven't used Firefox for a long time. Would you like to refresh
it?"

IME, should a user download a new version of Ffox and install rather
than allow an update, a refresh nag appears the first time the new
install opens.

I'm pretty sure there's a 'Find out more' link, which perhaps goes
here:
<https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/refresh-firefox-reset-add-ons-and-settings>

I generally say no and update via 'Help about'.

While I kill via the 'x' at the right side of the single-line banner,
the last thing I want is for settings within my profile to be mangled.
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.software.firefox

On 8/2/26 01:27, Dave Royal wrote:

"R.Wieser" <address@is.invalid> Wrote in message:

David,

'Refresh' is doublespeak: deletes what you had setup including some
user data.

Context ?

There are a number of refreshes that do exactly what the words stands for. >>

Imagine if someone offered to 'refresh' your house, and then
demolished it and built you a mud hut without any more modern
conveniences/rooms.

Thats a bad analogy, hurting any point you're trying to make.

Even if it truly "deletes what you had setup" than what you would be left >> with would be a newbuild, ready-to-live-in house, including rugs, furniture,
washing machine and all the other conveniences.

... like, in Firefox, having created a new profile.

But a question : did you *really* run something called "refresh" - which
obviously would make changes - without checking what its supposed to do
and/or making a backup first ?

I've often come across Refresh, either when I resurrect Nightly
having not used it for many months - usually to test my addons
when the addons API changes - or start up a machine I haven't
used for a long time. I get a message like "It looks like you
haven't used Firefox for a long time. Would you like to refresh
it?"

This sounds helpful and harmless. It's not. How hard could it be to
add this: "CAUTION -- REFRESH saves bookmarks and passwords and deletes
all other personalization. See details here: <URL>" ?

I'm pretty sure there's a 'Find out more' link, which perhaps goes
here: <https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/refresh-firefox-reset-add-ons-and-settings>

I generally say no and update via 'Help about'.

A lot of people, many of whom should know better including a PhD
Physics/LLD of my acquaintance, are absolutely ignorant about software
options etc. Beyond doing what's necessary to get things going, it's
all a mystery. A warning should definitely be given for this seemingly
kindly suggestion, especially since it's NOT all that difficult to provide.
--
Cheers, Bev
"Life is actually fair. It just doesn't seem to be common
knowledge that 'fair' sometimes sucks." -- Jim Cook

--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.software.firefox

R.Wieser wrote:

David,

'Refresh' is doublespeak: deletes what you had setup including some
user data.

Context ?

There are a number of refreshes that do exactly what the words stands for.

Imagine if someone offered to 'refresh' your house, and then
demolished it and built you a mud hut without any more modern
conveniences/rooms.

Thats a bad analogy, hurting any point you're trying to make.

Even if it truly "deletes what you had setup" than what you would be left with would be a newbuild, ready-to-live-in house, including rugs, furniture, washing machine and all the other conveniences.

... like, in Firefox, having created a new profile.

But a question : did you *really* run something called "refresh" - which obviously would make changes - without checking what its supposed to do and/or making a backup first ?

Regards,
Rudy Wieser

That is not really helpful. When that query comes, you can't use
Firefox until you've answered that question. Don't forget that someone
does not start Firefox so they can debug a "feature" that they never
asked for and never expected. Having fallen into that trap once, my
short term solution was to always say No and my longer term solution was
to create a file:
/etc/firefox/policies/policies.json
with content including:

{
"policies": {
"DisableProfileRefresh": true
}
}

I have a number of other settings enforced that way and about:policies
tells me if some are not being set because I've screwed up the syntax in
some way (and that's also a reason to have the policies in that file in alphabetical order).

That works under Linux, Policies under Windows are (I think) in the
Install file so I've never bothered with them there. Some friends use Windows, I don't.
I'd expect Firefox on a Mac to work broadly the same way as under Linux.
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.software.firefox

On Sun, 2 Aug 2026 12:46:59 +0200, "R.Wieser" <address@is.invalid>
wrote:

Dave,

And I've seen in mentioned Firefox 'what to do if ....' pages, among the >> 'if
all else fails' suggestions.

I just found the link you posted (in your previous post) as the first result >when I searched for "firefox refresh" using DDG. IOW, information about it >is not hard to find.

Perhaps the OP will tell us more.

I doubt it.

His post was all about being angry because of the result he got when he did >something he had no clue to what would would happen, and didn't bother to >try to find out before doing it.

I do wonder what he thought that that "refresh" option would do for him >though...

NE1, er, anyone with the smarts to have navigated into the depths of
Usenet's arcane and ancient info-sharing even to pose such a question
would be aware of dangers there might be.
Phishy comes to mind.
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.software.firefox

On 02/08/2026 16:39, R.Wieser wrote:

dillinger,

Are you sure it's not a Microsoft Windows problem?

...

David is on Linux. Or at least he posted from Linux, same setup as you.

In a lot less words : Yes, you are sure.

In Pan press H to check the headers, always a good plan before
blaming the OS if it isn't mentioned.

It wasn't a blame, but a question to a possibility.

Besides that, when a question - or in this case : a complaint - is posted its upto the poster to supply all the information pertinent to it.
Assuming that "everyone knows" is not a good starting-point. Requiring
that everyone go find the user-agent in the header and from there figure out which OS it belongs to isn't a good starting-point either. Besides that he might have posted from a device other than his 'Puter ofcourse.

Point in case : I was not even sure if that "Refresh" wasn't an external program (like RegClean and its ilk).

Point in case : When I throw the whole user-agent string into DDG and I get (lots of) results related to a city, something about "Thermochemical
Tables", "Furniture And Homeware", "Pan Am Flight 103 - Wikipedia" and some other stuff, but none about a newsgroup-client. And I went down to page
six - beyond the "I'm desparate" level :-).

Quoting the whole user-agent string and trying again I get "No results found".

Regards,
Rudy Wieser

So you've never seen this, no problem, next time you don't understand something just ask. ("What is Refresh?") Without ranting preferably.

--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.software.firefox

Nobody,

NE1, er, anyone with the smarts to have navigated into the depths
of Usenet's arcane and ancient info-sharing even to pose such a
question would be aware of dangers there might be.

Maybe he was, and that is why he's so angry. <whistle>

Regards,
Rudy Wieser


--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.software.firefox

dillinger,

So you've never seen this, no problem, next time you don't understand something just ask. ("What is Refresh?") Without ranting preferably.

I'm not the OP. IOW, you're talking to the wrong person.

Regards,
Rudy Wieser


--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.software.firefox

R Daneel Olivaw,

R.Wieser wrote:

David,

'Refresh' is doublespeak: deletes what you had setup including
some user data.

Context ?

[snip]

That is not really helpful. When that query comes, you can't use Firefox until you've answered that question.

???? "that query" ????

I think you're responding to the wrong person, and possibly even subthread.

Regards,
Rudy Wieser



--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.software.firefox

On 03/08/2026 08:25, R.Wieser wrote:

dillinger,

So you've never seen this, no problem, next time you don't understand
something just ask. ("What is Refresh?") Without ranting preferably.

I'm not the OP. IOW, you're talking to the wrong person.

Regards,
Rudy Wieser

I'm talking to you Rudy, you're the one that's never seen Refresh.
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.software.firefox

dillinger,

So you've never seen this, no problem, next time you don't understand
something just ask. ("What is Refresh?") Without ranting preferably.

I'm not the OP. IOW, you're talking to the wrong person.

Regards,
Rudy Wieser

I'm talking to you Rudy, you're the one that's never seen Refresh.

I do not actually need to see some unmarked/badly marked button/link/program
to know that its not a good idea to just press/click/run it either.

I do not need to inspect software from a random website to know its not a
good idea to just install it.

I do not need to read ChatGPT replies to know that they as easily halucinate
as giving you something to work with.

I do not need to see someone put themselves into a car press and get
squashed to death to know it would not be a good idea to crawl into it
myself - Knowing (not even having seen it for myself) that it can crush a
car into a small cube gives me enough information to work with.

Capiche ?

But feel free to put something forward that counters what I've said - or
even just another POV.

Regards,
Rudy Wieser



--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.software.firefox

On 03/08/2026 09:55, R.Wieser wrote:

dillinger,

So you've never seen this, no problem, next time you don't understand
something just ask. ("What is Refresh?") Without ranting preferably.

I'm not the OP. IOW, you're talking to the wrong person.

Regards,
Rudy Wieser

I'm talking to you Rudy, you're the one that's never seen Refresh.

I do not actually need to see some unmarked/badly marked button/link/program to know that its not a good idea to just press/click/run it either.

I do not need to inspect software from a random website to know its not a good idea to just install it.

I do not need to read ChatGPT replies to know that they as easily halucinate as giving you something to work with.

I do not need to see someone put themselves into a car press and get
squashed to death to know it would not be a good idea to crawl into it
myself - Knowing (not even having seen it for myself) that it can crush a
car into a small cube gives me enough information to work with.

Capiche ?

But feel free to put something forward that counters what I've said - or
even just another POV.

Regards,
Rudy Wieser

It appears you know everything, how could I not see that before?
Is there anything we can help you with?
--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.software.firefox

dillinger,

It appears you know everything, how could I not see that before?

Actually, I'm pretty sure (understatement) I don't. I even made that quite clear in my first post. But maybe you missed that.

I do seem to have the, quite common, capacity to recognise someone trying to kill a POV, and enough experience to know how to respond to it.

Is there anything we can help you with?

Yes. By stop digging the pit you found yourself in deeper.

Regards,
Rudy Wieser


--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.software.firefox

On 03/08/2026 11:05, R.Wieser wrote:

dillinger,

It appears you know everything, how could I not see that before?

Actually, I'm pretty sure (understatement) I don't. I even made that quite clear in my first post. But maybe you missed that.

I do seem to have the, quite common, capacity to recognise someone trying to kill a POV, and enough experience to know how to respond to it.

Is there anything we can help you with?

Yes. By stop digging the pit you found yourself in deeper.

Regards,
Rudy Wieser

Sorry for getting a bit cynical, Rudy, but you're still missing the point.
I'm not arguing the OP should have clicked no, this is about what
happens when one clicks yes, and why that is a bad thing in/for Firefox.
If you had asked what is refresh? you would have been told immediately,
no need for speculations, no need to rant about the OP.
If you had read my first post you might even have understood some of it without asking, you're not dumb.
Common sense isn't the answer to everything, sometimes you just have to ask. --- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.comp.software.firefox

dillinger,

Sorry for getting a bit cynical, Rudy, but you're still missing the point.

Really ?

I'm not arguing the OP should have clicked no, this is about what happens when one clicks yes,

Than you didn't understand the OPs problem *at all*.

He could do {something} to which he didn't know *at all* what the result
would be, but choose to do it anyway - and when he didn't like the result he tried to blame the {something} for it.

What makes it worse is that several people, including myself, here have indicated that help was close at hand - help he didn't bother to read.

If you had asked what is refresh? you would have been told immediately, no need for speculations,

If you would actually have read my response than you would have noticed that
I didn't actually need the answer to that. Just like I do not really need
to know what the object is over which hydrochloric acid is poured - its a
bad idea in general.

, no need to rant about the OP.

He's like the proverbial carpenter who tried to blame his tools for an unwanted result, instead of accepting that it was his own stupidity that
lead to it. And thats besides that he didn't even think of making a backup of his profile (or even whole 'puter) before doing it.

The *only* mistakes are those of the OP. He's free to explain how he's not to blame for them though.

If you had read my first post you might even have understood some of it without asking, you're not dumb.

Yes, I read that. You explained *what* (likely) happened - but it was
mustard after the meal. In no way helpfull to the OP.

Common sense isn't the answer to everything,

When you're able to think for yourself common sense is *THE* answer to stuff like that : if you do not know what something is (for) than you should not touch it. If you touch it anyway than don't complain when you loose a
limb - or worse.

That goes for software, devices of any kind, as well as plants and animals (did I forget anything?)

sometimes you just have to ask.

If the OP would only have done just that *before* doing what he did (preferrably using google ofcourse) ...

But no, even now all he's "asked" is to remove the "dangerous scam offer". Zero indication that he wants to educate himself.

... perhaps that is what irritates me the most ...

Regards,
Rudy Wieser


--- Synchronet 3.22a-Linux NewsLink 1.2