How to Encrypt Bookmarks and Bookmark Folders in Firefox

Having your data on the Internet compromised isn’t unusual, and thus we use passwords to encrypt and safeguard our data from exploiters. Almost all of us use a password to ensure safety of our mails, documents, photographs and even applications but have you ever thought what about encrypting your bookmarks?

While encrypting bookmarks might not be always necessary, if you are on a shared user account, or want to quickly hide a bookmark from a prying eye, password-protecting it could be a quick solution.

If you think encrypting bookmarks is a good idea you can try a tool called Link Password. Link Password is a nifty add-on for Firefox browser that can help you password protect specific or all bookmarks. It works wherever Firefox does. Lets check it out.

Working with the Add-on

Step 1: Download and install Link Password add-on on your Firefox browser. You can either search and install it using the built-in Add-on Manager in Firefox or just head over to the Link Password page and click on Download Now button.

Step 2: Once you restart your browser after the plugin installs, open your bookmark library to start encrypting your links.

Step 3: Once you spot the link you want to encrypt, right click on it and select Encrypt this link.

Tip: You can also batch encrypt links by selecting a folder instead of a single link in the above step.

Step 4: You must now provide a password for the encryption of the link(s). At the time of encrypting you can check on Rename links which will rename the title of the page with a random name. You can still hunt for the link if using the favicon.

Tip: I would recommend using a single password to encrypt all the links as using a different password for every second link might mess things up.

That’s all, next time if anyone tries to open the encrypted link he will be prompted for password without which the link will fail to open.

To decrypt, right-click on any encrypted link in the Firefox Bookmark Library and click on Decrypt this link.

Note: If you have encrypted any link using the plugin make sure you decrypt them if you are planning to uninstall the add-on for any reasons. If you don’t, all your encrypted bookmarks will fail to open until you reinstall the plugin.

My Verdict

Overall the add-on is great but what I think is that there should be an option to add a master password to manage all the encrypted links. If someone forgets the password of an encrypted link there is no way he can retrieve it and thus looses the link forever.