118338 - addressbook file contains infomation about deleted people if duplicate people are created

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(SeaMonkey :: MailNews: Address Book & Contacts, defect)

Description

[Henrik Gemal]

I just deleted all entries in the addressbook except one and exited Mozilla. 
But if I look at the abook.mab file with a text editor I can see that it still 
contains information about all the deleted people.
A true privacy issue!

Here's how to reproduce:
1. start mozilla with a fresh and clean profile
2. start the addressbook without creating a mail account, just hit cancel and 
then exit in the account creation dialog.
3. create a person with First = "First", Last = "Last", Mail = "[e-mail]"
4. create a second person with the same info. First = "First", Last = "Last", 
Mail = "[e-mail]"
5. delete both persons and exit mozilla
6. look at the file abook.mab with a fileeditor. It contains the all the 
information about the person!!!!

Having duplicated persons and deleting people, doesn't "really" delete the 
people!

build 20020104

Comment 1

[Ninoschka Baca]

Marking nsbeta1 since the user will expect the data to be deleted. Isn't this a 
privacy issue?

Comment 2

[scottputterman]

I think this may be a dup of one of our bugs about not being able to compact the
address book.

Comment 3

[Ninoschka Baca]

Marking nsbeta1. When entries are deleted from the UI then those changes should
be reflected in the file itself. It's also a privacy issue.

Comment 4

[Samir Gehani]

Mail triage team: nsbeta1+/adt2

Comment 5

[Cavin Song]

Reassigning.

Comment 6

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

I'm not sure I agree this is a privacy issue.

if you can get to my abook.mab, you can do anything you want anyways.

why does it matter that deleted items aren't purged?

note, the same could be said about deleted mail in a local mail file, which
doesn't get removed until we compact.

we do have bugs on allowing for compaction of addressbooks, but I don't think we
want to undertake that risk right now.

Comment 7

[Samir Gehani]

Mail triage team: nsbeta1-

Comment 8

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

actually, won'tfix.

the deleted cards are kept around on purpose, for absync / palm sync purposes.

I know this, because it caused a regression, see #198303

and, as I said before, the same could be said about deleted mail in a local mail
file, which doesn't get removed until we compact.