199819 - setting browser.formfill.enable ("Saved Form Information") to false doesn't disable form autocomplete

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox :: Address Bar, defect)

Description

[aynilove [So, Jae-yoon]]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win95; en-US; rv:1.4a) Gecko/20030327 Phoenix/0.5
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win95; en-US; rv:1.4a) Gecko/20030327 Phoenix/0.5

saved form information -> save information I enter... pref is not work.

remove this checkbox will not save no longer form information I entered in web
pages, but it saved, and there is no difference between checked and unckecked.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
3.

Comment 1

[Sébastien Delahaye]

Reporter, are you saying that checking the checkbox should delete all saved
information?

Comment 2

[aynilove [So, Jae-yoon]]

what I mean is, this function should work as IE, uncheck the box should not save
any information I entered in web page.
ex. If user clear saved information and uncheck the box,
"clear" button should not activated.
saved password -> Remember password func is works well in this way..

Comment 3

[noririty]

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Start Phoenix with a clean profile.
2. Open [Tools]-[Options...]-[Privacy] panel.
3. Un-Check "Save information I enter in web page forms and the Search Bar"
4. (Press "Clear" button.) Note that "Clear" button is disabled. 
5. Open http://www.google.com/ and submit a word using input field.
6. Open http://www.google.com/ and start input the same word again.

Actual Results:  
Auto complete pops up the word which you entered at step5.
And also [Saved Form Information] "Clear" button on
[Tools]-[Options...]-[Privacy] panel re-enabled again!

Expected Results:  
Auto complete should not remember the word.
Also [Saved Form Information] "Clear" button should be stay disabled.

(I can confirm that information I entered to Search Bar was not collected after
step3.)

CONFIRMED

Comment 4

[Sébastien Delahaye]

Updating summary, adding to the dep list of bug 191524, and reassigning to Ben.

Comment 5

[Sébastien Delahaye]

Note: the privacy panel works, it sets the browser.formfill.enable pref to false.
It's the pref that doesn't work.
Updating summary and removing dep, since it's not related to bug 191524.

Comment 6

[Sébastien Delahaye]

The bug doesn't appear with a new profile. Actually, the bug comes from the old
wallet pref wallet.caveat. If set to true, Satchel is enabled.
This could be filed as a separate bug, but since the wallet prefs are no longer
part of Phoenix, it's probably useless.

Reporter, you can either start a new profile or set wallet.caveat to false in
about:config.

-> INVALID (and removing target milestone)

Comment 7

[Sébastien Delahaye]

Reopening. I must have tested something wrongly, I'm now seeing it again.

Comment 8

[Sébastien Delahaye]

*** Bug 202294 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 9

[Sébastien Delahaye]

*** Bug 204077 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 10

[Douglas A. Augusto]

User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.4b) Gecko/20030508
Mozilla Firebird/0.6

Status: CONFIRMED

Comment 11

[noririty]

*** Bug 183945 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 12

[Sébastien Delahaye]

*** Bug 205338 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 13

[James]

Confirmed, still happening in latest nightly.
-Create new profile
-Turn off "Save Form Information"
-Enter info in form
-When at form second time around, previous info pops up

Should stop recording new information.  It is correctly setting the pref
"browser.formfill.enable", browser is just ignoring this value.  Entering in
some keywords would help find this bug (I couldn't find it the first time
around).  Could use "saved form information" for keywords, since that's what the
gui pref says.  Is this kind of information useful?

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.4b) Gecko/20030514 Mozilla
Firebird/0.6

Comment 14

[Bill Mason]

Tweaking the summary to aid future searches.

Comment 15

[Matthew Miller]

This is a security/privacy issue. I suggest bumping the severity....

Comment 16

[TGOS]

I'm using Phoenix 0.6 right now (the new release) and not just that Phoenix
remembers what I entered into form fields even though the checkbox to remember
these information is unchecked, it even asks me when I hit submit if I want to
remember the information (you know, the dialog offering Yes/No/Never for current
site). Not always, but sometimes it still shows up. The profile is clean. And
sometimes data I enetered into form fields is even remembered between different
sessions. Or to say it in one word: Phoenix behaves like I would expect a
browser to behave if the checkbox is CHECKED.

Comment 17

[Bill Mason]

*** Bug 206974 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 18

[Bill Mason]

*** Bug 206999 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 19

[Bill Mason]

*** Bug 207990 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 20

[:deanis74]

Should it disable auto-complete?  We have a concept of form filling that IE
doesn't have.  IE only has auto-complete, whereas we have both auto-complete and
pre-filling of a form as soon as it's displayed.

Comment 21

[Jason Chu]

Not sure if this has been mentioned anywhere else but one way to manually
disable autocomplete in forms is to remove (or rename) satchel.xpt in the
components directory.  I've done this on two computers without any problems so
far.  It still occasionally asks whether or not to save form information but it
never does.  The address bar and quick search bar still have their
autocomplete's intact.

Comment 22

[Terry Smithwick]

   To Dean Tessman, comment #20: If Mozilla has two types of formfill, there
should be individual - working - options to turn them off to suit the needs of
the user.

Comment 23

[:deanis74]

Well, I wouldn't go that far.  I've thought about this a little more and I like
the idea of having the one pref dictate all form entry, both automatic and
auto-complete.  They're closely related, and if you don't use one then you
probably don't want the other, either.

Comment 24

[Erik]

*** Bug 212029 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 25

[Bill Mason]

*** Bug 212707 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 26

[Ben Pogue]

Have both options. I don't mind autocomplete but I can't stand form fill. I
don't like having to disable both in IE.

Comment 27

[Matthew Miller]

Conversely, I can't stand autocomplete but like form-fill.

Comment 28

[Bill Mason]

*** Bug 212791 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 29

[javier]

I like auto-complete in the navigation bar when I have history turned on. I like
auto-complete in the search bar when I have history turned on. I don't like
auto-complete in forms when I have save form information turned off. Hope I am
not confusing the issue.

I don't know what I would choose if I had to choose between all or none. I
prefer to have more choices - ifunowudimean!

Comment 30

[David P James]

Taking QA. Sorry for the bugspam

Comment 31

[KURAAKU Deibiddo]

i've had the same problem in 0.6.1 on Mac OS X...it worked properly in the
nightly build after 0.6, but is broken in the current release.

Comment 32

[Bill Mason]

Hardware -> All based on comment 31.

Comment 33

[Bill Mason]

*** Bug 215417 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 34

[Ben Goodger (use ben at mozilla dot org for email)]

Fixed. 

Comment 35

[noririty]

v. w/20030808
http://bonsai.mozilla.org/cvsview2.cgi?diff_mode=context&whitespace_mode=show&subdir=mozilla/toolkit/content/widgets&command=DIFF_FRAMESET&file=browser.xml&rev1=1.18&rev2=1.19&root=/cvsroot

Comment 36

[:deanis74]

noririty: sure the code's there, but have you verified it with a build?

Comment 37

[Bill Mason]

Still not working foe me 2003080808 PC/WinXP.  Reopening.

Comment 38

[Ben Goodger (use ben at mozilla dot org for email)]

Hm. let's try again. Fixed!

Comment 39

[David P James]

Verified w/ Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.5b) Gecko/20030811
Mozilla Firebird/0.6.1+

Comment 40

[Bill Mason]

Maybe I don't understand the functionality, but I don't understand why this
happens if this is fixed:

1) The pref is unchecked.  The Saved Form Information "Clear" button is not
active because there is no data stored (this is a new install/profile 20030811
Win2K).
2) I fill out forms here and there online.
3) I go back to the Privacy panel and the Saved Form Information "Clear" button
is now active, indicating (to me) that data is still being stored even though I
said not to.

I don't want to just reopen the bug again, because I feel like I just don't
understand something about what should be happening with this pref.

Comment 41

[David P James]

Hmm, it seems that we still gather form information. This bug was about
disabling form autocomplete, which it now does. Not gathering information is not
enough; you may already have info stored that you do not want autocompleted.

If you want to stop Firebird from gathering form info, you could always file an
RFE on that I suppose.

Comment 42

[Matthew van Eerde]

Recommend status -> REOPENED.  The checkbox says "save form information" -
doesn't mention anything about autofill.  As this is in the "Privacy" section of
Options, the implication is that clearing the checkbox will protect your privacy.

If the functionality cannot be changed, the language should be clarified to
better describe what happens.

Comment 43

[Bill Mason]

I'm reopening, since I have to consider it a bug as it stands.

The text says "save information I enter..." and I have it unchecked.  Nothing
should be stored, but it is.

Re comment 41
"you may already have info stored that you do not want autocompleted"

In my case, I am talking about a brand-new profile with no information stored
from anytime previous.  Information is still being captured and stored
regardless of the state of the checkbox.

20030811 PC/Win2K

Comment 44

[Nitin (vfwlkr)]

Just adding my 2c.
Privacy is important stuff. Some websites make you enter your ssn, and at times
i've seen phoenix/firebird remember that information. Unchecking the box "save
information i enter in web forms", should guarantee that private data is not
being captured. Even if a new bug is required, it should be "major" and not "enh".

Comment 45

[David P James]

Well so much for that. It seems we're trying to do something with the pref
browser.formfill.enable other than what the pref name itself suggests (as well
as the summary). Turning off Autocomplete and turning off 'gather form data' are
two different albeit closely related functions. As I mentionned in comment 41,
we can't just turn off 'gather form data' as we do have to cover the case where
the user has already gathered data.

As I see it, here are the ways out of this:
(1) Change the text in the Privacy Pane to something more accurate ("Enable form
and Search Bar Autocompletion" for example). That would entail reResolving this
bug and filing a new one for the text change (it would need a new bug since it
belongs to the Preferences component).

(2) Do (1) and also add a new pref and functionality that actually
allows/prevents saving of form data. Let it use the text now [wrongly] employed
by browser.formfill.enable and make it a sub-pref of browser.formfill.enable
(that is, if browser.formfill.enable is unchecked then this new pref would be
greyed out and set to false). This would open the possibility of autocompleting
without gathering new form data, something that may or may not be useful. If we
were really keen, we could even bloat up the UI a bit by including a manager of
some type that would be launched by a button in which we could select domains
for which to enable/disable form data gathering. I know I'd disable it on
google.com and google.ca... :)
This would also entail reResolving this bug and opening two new bugs, one for
the name change and one for the new pref (though they could be covered together
I suppose).

(3) Scrap the pref browser.formfill.enable altogether (or change its name) and
replace it with an all-encompassing pref that both disables form autocomplete
and saving data in forms. It could retain the same text as is currently employed.
This would entail resummarizing this bug and leaving it in its Reopened state.

Comments? Other suggestions/ideas?

Comment 46

[Matthew van Eerde]

I like 3) but with the additional caveat that setting this to "don't save data"
also destroys any saved data that may have accumulated (on a per-profile basis?)
 To me, auto-complete without saving data seems ineffective - what would
populate the auto-complete list?  On the other hand, saving data without
auto-complete is downright scary.

Comment 47

[Ben Goodger (use ben at mozilla dot org for email)]

-> .8 then. 

Comment 48

[James]

I've been unpleasantly surprised to have my bank account number pop up
automatically even with this option unchecked.  I think simply having this
option turn off autocomplete without disabling info gathering is misleading and
counterproductive.  You may be able to come up with a case where someone would
want to gather info without displaying it, or autocomplete only on previously
stored information.  But it would be an extreme minority.  But you mentioned
that we were turning off autocomplete without changing info gathering... isn't
that the opposite of what we want?  Shouldn't you just be able to clear the
info, uncheck the box, and then since there is not info you wont need to worry
about autocomplete?  I'm just curious how this works.

Comment 49

[David P James]

>Shouldn't you just be able to clear the info, uncheck the box,
>and then since there is not info you wont need to worry
>about autocomplete?

Yes, we should be able to do that. But there are a couple of things to note
here: first, you have to clear the contents, since if autocomplete was still
working it would just keep filling stuff out. Disabling autocomplete is what has
been fixed already. But we still need to stop if from gathering info, which is
what it is still doing.

I'm not keen on automatically clearing existing info, as requested in comment 46
however. First, FB would be doing something it wasn't told to do - not good in
my view. Second, I don't think it is desirable. Suppose a friend is over and she
 (ok, I admit I'm dreaming) wants to check her email at Yahoo or Hotmail. So you
go to the Privacy dialog and turn off Saving of form info so (1) your info
doesn't pop-up when she goes to log in and (2) what she enters doesn't get
stored. What you do not want is to have all your existing info completely wiped.

Comment 50

[Matthew van Eerde]

As the author of 46, I see your point and agree completely.
I just worry that info will be stored without the user knowing or being able to
delete it.

As long as the "Clear" button works correctly I withdraw 46.  That is, the Clear
button should be enabled if there is data, disabled if there is no data.  A
subtle error would be to disable the Clear button immediately upon unchecking
"save form info" - the user would have no way to delete the data.

Comment 51

[:deanis74]

Sorry.  Stupid Alt+D access key.

Comment 52

[Bill Mason]

*** Bug 221224 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 53

[David P James]

Summary used incorrect term for the pref category; altering to better catch
bugzilla searches. Sorry for the bugspam, but it's better than more dupemail.

Comment 54

[Gerardo Di Giacomo]

Definitively, is there a bugfix? I'm lose in the messages...
I'm using MozillaFirebird 0.6.1

Comment 55

[Gerardo Di Giacomo]

Definitively, is there a bugfix? I'm lose in the messages...
I'm using MozillaFirebird 0.6.1

Comment 56

[Bill Mason]

"Definitively, is there a bugfix? I'm lose in the messages...
I'm using MozillaFirebird 0.6.1"

Depends on what you mean by fixed.

The core problem of form autocomplete popping up input into form fields
regardless of whether this pref or not was checked has been fixed.  I think the
fix came after 0.6.1, so you should upgrade to 0.7.

The secondary privacy problem of form autocomplete storing form data even with
this pref not checked has not been fixed yet.  This is currently being targeted
at 0.8.

Comment 57

[Ben Goodger (use ben at mozilla dot org for email)]

Fixed now. 

Comment 58

[David P James]

v.

Comment 59

[Bill Mason]

This bug has returned for me.  I'm seeing it in the 20040312 (PC/WinXP) build. 
Even though I've always had the pref set to false, the browser is storing and
filling in form data on forms I revisit.

I have reproduced this in a brand-new profile.

Comment 60

[Mike Crawford]

I am seeing this bug coming back as well.  I tried two nightly builds, and both
are doing it and I tried with both a new and old profile.

Build ID: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.7b)
Gecko/20040412 Firefox/0.8.0+

Comment 61

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

let's not reopen an old bug that was actually fixed. there's a new bug over at
bug 227640 that has a testcase.