Open Bug 504795 Opened 15 years ago Updated 2 years ago

Page Shows up in Print History

Categories

(Firefox :: Private Browsing, enhancement)

enhancement

Tracking

()

People

(Reporter: spam.Jason.Cook599, Unassigned)

Details

(Keywords: privacy)

Attachments

(1 file)

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1) Gecko/20090624 Firefox/3.5 GTB5 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729) AutoPager/0.5.2.2 (http://www.teesoft.info/)
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1) Gecko/20090624 Firefox/3.5 GTB5 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729) AutoPager/0.5.2.2 (http://www.teesoft.info/)

When you are in Private Browsing when you print a page it shows the page title in the list of things being printed.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Go into private Browsing
2.Print a page
3.Go to Control Panel >Printers and Faxes
4.Select the printer you printed it on
5.Page name shows up
Actual Results:  
Shows the page you were printing.

Expected Results:  
Shown "Firefox", "Private Browsing" or "Untitled"

This may not seem like a big deal but if you are at a workplace and you print something everyone will see it. I log the name of everthing that is printed so it will stay there until I delete it.
Once we hand a print job off to the OS we have no control over it. Are you proposing that all print jobs started from within private browsing have no title, or some generic title like "Firefox Document"?

I don't think this bug needs to remain private.
Group: core-security
(In reply to comment #1)
> Once we hand a print job off to the OS we have no control over it. Are you
> proposing that all print jobs started from within private browsing have no
> title, or some generic title like "Firefox Document"?

This is a valid enhancement request, and a nice one I think.  Alex, do you think it would be a good idea to give all print jobs generic titles like Benjamin suggests?
Severity: major → enhancement
Status: UNCONFIRMED → NEW
Ever confirmed: true
Keywords: uiwanted
OS: Windows XP → All
Hardware: x86 → All
Version: unspecified → Trunk
I never cease to be amazed by the things we forgot to catch :)  We don't want to directly expose that someone was in private browsing mode, so that rules out titles like "Firefox - Private Browsing."  Something like "Firefox Document" or "Web Document" seems like it would be fine.
OK, taking.
Assignee: nobody → ehsan.akhgari
Status: NEW → ASSIGNED
Keywords: uiwantedprivacy
(In reply to comment #3)
> I never cease to be amazed by the things we forgot to catch :)  We don't want
> to directly expose that someone was in private browsing mode, so that rules out
> titles like "Firefox - Private Browsing."  Something like "Firefox Document" or
> "Web Document" seems like it would be fine.

I just thought of something the other day. We can't name it "Firefox Document" because anyone using Firefox knows that the document name is the title of the page you are printing. The name should be something like "Untitled".
>I just thought of something the other day. We can't name it "Firefox Document"
>because anyone using Firefox knows that the document name is the title of the
>page you are printing. The name should be something like "Untitled".

yeah, we've previously tried to make sure that we are not exposing that the user is (or was) in private browsing mode.  So I guess given that objective, something like "Untitled" is a safer way to go.
I bet that as soon as this gets a patch, we'll start getting bugs like "every page I print in Private Browsing has Untitled as the title."

If you save files, we don't obfuscate the filenames or the origin.  If you bookmark pages, we do the same.  It certainly seems as if printing falls into the same category, and I'm not sure the cure is better than the disease.
(In reply to comment #7)
> I bet that as soon as this gets a patch, we'll start getting bugs like "every
> page I print in Private Browsing has Untitled as the title."
> 
> If you save files, we don't obfuscate the filenames or the origin.  If you
> bookmark pages, we do the same.  It certainly seems as if printing falls into
> the same category, and I'm not sure the cure is better than the disease.

Well look at it this way. What if you are just bookmarking a page temporarily (that is what I do if I bookmark in Private Browsing so I don't have millions of tabs open)? I have also just saved a file to the desktop then pulled out a flash drive and moved the file. The way my computer is set up (and I can imagine that it is set up that way at large businesses) is it will save the name of all the files that have been printed until the administer has deleted them. If you do decide not to do it this way at least make it changeable in "about:config".
>If you save files, we don't obfuscate the filenames or the origin.  If you
>bookmark pages, we do the same.  It certainly seems as if printing falls into
>the same category, and I'm not sure the cure is better than the disease.

I was thinking more about the distinction between locally stored content versus storing information on a device you don't control.  For instance, it would be bad if the office printer had a record of the file resume_mconnor_google.html being printed out late at night :)

>I bet that as soon as this gets a patch, we'll start getting bugs like "every
>page I print in Private Browsing has Untitled as the title."

sure, but in private browsing data preservation is the new data loss, it's intentionally backwards land.
I think the Scenario Alex points out in comment 9 is a nice example of why this bug should be fixed.  I sympathize with mconnor's dilemma of having to WONTFIX quite a few bugs after this gets fixed, but that's what we've been doing with many other PB bugs.

FWIW, I don't think the analogy of printing and saving a page is accurate, because when a user saves a file, she expects that the file (together with its name, etc.) is in fact saved, but when she prints a document, there is no indication that the printed document is saved anywhere except the paper it's printed on.
I tried patching nsPrintEngine::GetDocumentTitleAndURL, but that modifies the page title inside the printed content and the print preview area as well (when, for example, the title is printed in the page header, or inside the print progress handler).  I need help figuring out where the print job title which is passed to the OS is set, so that I can change only that title to "Untitled".

Can anyone share any pointers?
Attached patch WIP 1Splinter Review
The patch I talked about above...
Assignee: ehsan → nobody
Status: ASSIGNED → NEW
Severity: normal → S3
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