1073995 - [UX] Design: Mark privacy-impacting preferences in about:preferences

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox :: Settings UI, defect)

Description

[(Currently slow to respond) Philipp Sackl [:phlsa] (Firefox UX) please use needinfo]

After some design exploration done for bug 1044308, we found that consolidating all privacy-impacting preferences in one place had too many downsides.
What we can do instead is to mark privacy-impacting preferences e.g. with an icon and a tooltip that indicates that some data is being sent to some server in order to make that feature work.
This way we can be transparent about what happens to our users' data without messing with the information architecture of preferences.


+++ This bug was initially created as a clone of Bug #1044308 +++

Some users want to turn off all Firefox integration with external services. It's possible to do that now, but not that intuitive. E.g., the Safe Browsing prefs under Preferences > Security, the geolocation pref (only exposed in about:config under geo.enabled), search suggestions (click dropdown in search bar, checkbox for "Show Search Suggestions"), FHR/Telemetry/Crash Reporting (under Advanced > Data Choices).

Compare that the Chrome, where all service integrations (geolocation, Safe Browsing, suggestions, spelling corrections, etc.) are grouped under Advanced > Privacy.

We should make it easy for users to opt-out.

Comment 1

[Justin Dolske [:Dolske]]

Is this something that could be done as a variation on in-content preference searching? Most literally, that could be to tag preferences so that a search for "privacy" listed the relevant things in the results. For better discoverability, there could be beter UI wrapping this (e.g. a "Privacy" tab that actually just displays search results for privacy).

Comment 2

[(Currently slow to respond) Philipp Sackl [:phlsa] (Firefox UX) please use needinfo]

(In reply to Justin Dolske [:Dolske] from comment #1)
> Is this something that could be done as a variation on in-content preference
> searching? Most literally, that could be to tag preferences so that a search
> for "privacy" listed the relevant things in the results. For better
> discoverability, there could be beter UI wrapping this (e.g. a "Privacy" tab
> that actually just displays search results for privacy).

Yes, the plan is to integrate it with ICP search once that is ready :)

Comment 3

[(Currently slow to respond) Philipp Sackl [:phlsa] (Firefox UX) please use needinfo]

Attachment: Mockup v1

Comment 4

[Stephen Horlander [:shorlander]]

Comment on attachment 8504670 [details]
Mockup v1

Looks good. Did you try one without the base and just the dish? Might be  a little cleaner.

Comment 5

[Justin Dolske [:Dolske]]

(In reply to Philipp Sackl [:phlsa] from comment #3)
> Created attachment 8504670 [details]
> Mockup v1

Hmm. Seems like this is adding a lot of clutter to the prefs UI, and I'm not sure this is really a helpful privacy feature a significant number of users (certainly not most).

In fact, I think it actually risks causing users _harm_, if it leads a user to start going through and disabling everything that's tagged (notable examples: safe browsing, update checks, OSCP checks). We've been careful to design the relevant features to be as privacy-respecting as possible, and in the grand scheme of things these really have no privacy impact compared to other things a user does in their browser.

I'd suggest that we instead just put a more prominent link to https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox/ (or a page like it) in the Privacy pane of preferences.

Comment 6

[(Currently slow to respond) Philipp Sackl [:phlsa] (Firefox UX) please use needinfo]

Attachment: Mockup v1.1

Remove the base of the dish per Stephens suggestion.

I'm personally not so much concerned about clutter, but the balance of the tradeoff between transparency and people just checking off everything uninformed is also bugging me.
I'll wait with filing any engineering bugs on this until we sort that out.

Comment 7

[(Currently slow to respond) Philipp Sackl [:phlsa] (Firefox UX) please use needinfo]

Attachment: dish.svg

And there's the icon