Closed Bug 1181222 Opened 9 years ago Closed 9 years ago

"Default to Private browsing" preference in Privacy Settings

Categories

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: General, defect)

All
Android
defect
Not set
normal

Tracking

(Not tracked)

RESOLVED WONTFIX

People

(Reporter: antlam, Unassigned)

References

Details

I agree with Gemma's suggestion for updating the description copy to say:

"For all links opened in Nightly" 

rather than, "For all external links opened in Nightly"

An easy enough fix to smooth out some UX hiccups in this feature.
I'm confused, are we planning to ship this feature? Right now it's only on Nightly, and I thought we weren't happy with the global-ness of this setting, since it applies to all links.

If we are going to ship this feature, I think the setting should move to the "Privacy" section of settings, since "Customize" seems like a weird place for it.
Flags: needinfo?(alam)
My mistake, I thought we wanted to ship this but I'm going to NI product for the direction here.

Personally, I think it's quite useful especially since we know a lot of users are coming from outside the browser.
Flags: needinfo?(krudnitski)
Flags: needinfo?(bbermes)
Flags: needinfo?(alam)
After talking with Anthony and Barbara a bit, and thinking about this feature a bit more myself, I do think it could be valuable to ship it. However, I think we'll need to wrangle some bugs to make that happen, since I think there's some more follow-up work needed, and at the very least we need a bug to enable this :)
I wonder why this feature was added to the Customize screen, maybe because it felt similar to the one above (Open multiple links), I'm guessing here.

Agree with 
a) updated copy, remove of external, but if we ship it to non-Nigthly, the copy has to be changed again to "For all links opened in Firefox"
b) the move of this feature to the Privacy setting, any specific spot in there?

However, I'm thinking about the use case of where/when somebody would like to enable that feature (outside of the Nighly use case), i.e. if somebody is already in the private browsing mode, don't all links get opened as private anyways?



Also just to confirm there is a phrobe for that in the UI telemetry interface, correct?
Flags: needinfo?(bbermes)
(In reply to Barbara Bermes [:bbermes] from comment #4)
> However, I'm thinking about the use case of where/when somebody would like
> to enable that feature (outside of the Nighly use case), i.e. if somebody is
> already in the private browsing mode, don't all links get opened as private
> anyways?

This feature is only for links that are being opened from other applications. 

On Android, when a user taps a link in say, Twitter, the user is given a sheet of choices that can handle links. The idea here is when they choose to open in Firefox (or simply do because we are their default), this link opens in a Private tab.

If a user is already in Private browsing (in Firefox) and they press a link, you're right - it will stay in the Private tab :)
I was talking with Chenxia about this in our 1x1 earlier, and she brought up a good question about why we just have this feature for external links, as opposed to an "Always use private browsing" feature. Do we know if there are any user studies about how users think about links from other apps differently from links they click in the browser?

It would definitely be more engineering work to support this feature, but I think it would be worth considering the value of private browsing specifically for external links.

Reading the description of the original bug, as well as the initial comments, it actually sounds like this was the intention of this feature, and I'm not sure how the scope changed:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1065004#c0
(In reply to :Margaret Leibovic from comment #6)
> I was talking with Chenxia about this in our 1x1 earlier, and she brought up
> a good question about why we just have this feature for external links, as
> opposed to an "Always use private browsing" feature. Do we know if there are
> any user studies about how users think about links from other apps
> differently from links they click in the browser?

Fair point, I had forgotten about this "Always use Private browsing". Maybe instead of just on/off. We should add a third option, "Only for links"? (copy tbd).
When we first experimented with this feature, it was due to user comments asking for an 'always use PB' option which, really, would be a result of someone tapping on a link in an email, Twitter, Facebook etc and us throwing the link into a non-PB session (otherwise the user would simply be browsing in PB to begin with!)

A few other notes:
* I agree that this should be in the 'privacy' group of settings
* This makes a lovely proof point to the Fx 42 'Control' story we're aiming for 
* Changing the copy from 'external links' to 'links' doesn't seem quite right. It did initially, but then if I'm browsing in a 'normal' session, I wouldn't want every link I tapped suddenly going into a PB session! That's the connotation of 'all links'. But, I agree that 'external links' is likely the wrong terminology and maybe we could have Matej brainstorm on a few ideas (like 'links from other applications')
Flags: needinfo?(krudnitski)
Ok, got it, 'always use PB' makes a good use case, so I think my misunderstanding of this shows that we might want to think of re-vamping the copy to be more explicit of what that actually means. 

I like Karen's direction on the updated copy, i.e. links from other applications, or (maybe too long) all links opened in Firefox (including other installed applications such as email, Twitter etc.).

Not sure about adding a third option, Anthony because it might get even more confusing.
(In reply to Karen Rudnitski [:kar] from comment #8)
> When we first experimented with this feature, it was due to user comments
> asking for an 'always use PB' option which, really, would be a result of
> someone tapping on a link in an email, Twitter, Facebook etc and us throwing
> the link into a non-PB session (otherwise the user would simply be browsing
> in PB to begin with!)

My understanding is that "I want to always use Private Browsing" means "I don't want my history, etc saved by Fennec, *ever*", and so I wouldn't expect users to make a distinction between "links opened from the Twitter app" and "links opened from within Fennec"; you can use Twitter from either of these places, so having Fennec distinguish between external and internal sources will just add confusion. If I don't want my history saved by Fennec, needing to remember to switch to PB tabs before typing into the urlbar every time I open Fennec must be annoying.

> (otherwise the user would simply be browsing in PB to begin with!)

I would argue this isn't a good assumption.
Could we do some sort of user study to understand how real people think about links from apps vs. links from webpages? I agree with Chenxia that it seems a bit strange to differentiate between opening a link in the Twitter app vs. the Twitter website. I also don't want to give users a false sense of security that their other apps don't know about what they're doing, since there's likely even more tracking/history if you're tapping on something from within a native app.

Instead of speculating about how people feel, I think it could be really informative to do a small bit of research.
If I'm on the Twitter website, I'm already in my browser, no? If I don't want my history tracked, I'm already likely using Private Browsing. 

So that's my distinction: if I'm already browsing on websites and I'm worried about my history etc, I'll be in PB already. OR I'm browsing, want to open a link and long-tap to open it in a PB tab.

What THIS does is it allows users who are using an app (email, twitter, facebook, etc etc) to open up those links in PB. 

This is a step towards giving something of value to users without punting *all* of their browsing into PB (which means you'd have to make a very explicit choice about the benefits of having browsing history to get to where you want to go quickly vs not polluting your history with websites you're unsure of). If I'm already browsing, I have ways to easily invoke PB, and this allows users to extend that PB control to opening links from outside the browser. 

I'd like to get this sorted for Fx 42 to satisfy this use case in order to provide users with more control whilst browsing. This can, of course, still be improved to encompass further use cases, but this is something I've talked to some partners about who are very much keen on helping satisfy this use case and is one they would like to promote. 

We're building out features that provide areas of control to a range of users. In this case, we're allowing users who would otherwise skip tapping on links from apps outside the browser with a way to do so without clogging up their browser history etc
I'm just not convinced that "users who want to open external links in PB" is anywhere near as significant a use case as "people who want to permanently use private browsing all the time everywhere". This really seems like an area where user studies would be useful, to really make sure the feature we're building makes sense, and also isn't confusing to users.

That being said, what is the user story behind this feature? I think we have two different stories going on, which is why there's some conflict here.
From a UX stand point, I think a "Default to Private browsing" option (under "Privacy") makes the most sense.

I think we could offer 3 options here: 

1) Off
2) On
3) On for external links only (copy tbd)

I think this would clear up the messaging a bit. When "enabled", a user's activity (opening Firefox, opening links in Firefox from outside the browser, etc) would always just default to Private browsing (in place of Normal browsing). Whereas setting #3, would give them the control that Karen is referring to.
Blocks: pb-external-link
No longer blocks: fennec-pb-v2
No longer blocks: pb-external-link
Summary: Update copy for "Open links in Private browsing" feature → Experiment with "Default to Private browsing" preference in Privacy Settings
Renaming since this bug seems to have morphed / scope creeped it's way to be about something else.

Barbara, NI-ing you to get this on your radar as an experiment. Basically a toggle for "always default to private browsing mode" in Fennec.

Thoughts?
Flags: needinfo?(bbermes)
So this bug is just about experimenting with adding this option to the settings? Isn't that similar to the bug we talked about the tri-state https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1185163. Similar issue. 

Can you define experiment? Would Gemma be doing some user testing on it?
Flags: needinfo?(bbermes) → needinfo?(alam)
(In reply to Barbara Bermes [:barbara] from comment #16)
> So this bug is just about experimenting with adding this option to the
> settings? Isn't that similar to the bug we talked about the tri-state
> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1185163. Similar issue. 

You're thinking bug 1205711. See comment 15 :)

> Can you define experiment? Would Gemma be doing some user testing on it?

Essentially, I think a way to "Default to Private browsing mode" for Fennec could be a valuable feature. I just wanted to get your thoughts on this feature :)
Flags: needinfo?(alam) → needinfo?(bbermes)
Flags: needinfo?(bbermes)
Summary: Experiment with "Default to Private browsing" preference in Privacy Settings → "Default to Private browsing" preference in Privacy Settings
I like the idea of having

Private browsing: never/always/external only
We are going to WONTFIX this, and instead allow users to control the privacy of their external links.

See bug 1205712.
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 9 years ago
Resolution: --- → WONTFIX
Product: Firefox for Android → Firefox for Android Graveyard
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