1342373 - Private browsing data retained and easily revealed

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: Awesomescreen, defect)

Description

[Christopher Bruce]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 5.0.2; SAMSUNG SM-T800 Build/LRX22G) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) SamsungBrowser/3.0 Chrome/38.0.2125.102 Safari/537.36

Steps to reproduce:

Select 'History' restore 'Recently closed' tabs


Actual results:

All 'Private' tabs are revealed and re-opened 


Expected results:

Not trace or record of the private tabs should be retained.

Comment 1

[Jan Henning [:JanH]]

Could you elaborate a little on your STR, i.e. especially whether you are opening the History panel while in private mode?

If so, this is by design. As long as at least one private mode tab remains open, "Recently closed" private mode tabs are displayed when viewing the History while in private mode.

They are however
- not displayed when viewing the history from a normal (non-private) tab
- not written to disk
- all forgotten about once you close the last remaining private mode tab

To absolutely rule out a possible bug I need a more precise description of your STR here, though.

Comment 2

[Christopher Bruce]

Hi Jan, 

Well, I can confirm two things. 

When I start Firefox, it opens with a non-private tab, my 'home' page

When I select 'New private tab' from the drop down menu, I don't get a new private tab as requested! 

What actually happens is that the first tab, non-private, converts to a private one! 

I did not realise that was happening and it is, in my opinion, faulty practice. 

I now understand that when I have closed all the private tabs, the initial tab does not change back to public and therefore the situation you describe stands true. 

I didn't realise that either. It is reasonable to have expected a return to the status quo. 

Hope this helps. 

Regards

Chris

Comment 3

[Jan Henning [:JanH]]

(In reply to Christopher Bruce from comment #2)
> When I select 'New private tab' from the drop down menu, I don't get a new
> private tab as requested! 
> 
> What actually happens is that the first tab, non-private, converts to a
> private one!

Are you sure? It might appear that way because the tab counter counts normal and private tabs separately, so if you have one normal tab open and then open a new private mode tab, the counter will remain at "1". However if you open the tabs tray and switch between the private and normal tab lists (the mask and the hat icon respectively), you should still be able to see the tab that opened when Firefox started as well as any other tabs you might have opened before creating the private mode tab.

> I now understand that when I have closed all the private tabs, the initial
> tab does not change back to public and therefore the situation you describe
> stands true.

Are you sure you've closed all private tabs? If you can still see the "We won't remember any history, but downloaded files ..." message, that means you still have a private mode tab open. When you close that as well, you should be returned to normal mode and any tabs you might have had open there.

Comment 4

[Christopher Bruce]

Yes you are right, 'It appears that way!' 

It seems then, that your tab counter does not reflect a reality that now, two tabs and open. These simple mathematics declare a recognisable truth, that two tabs are open whereas your truth, 'one tab open' is not the whole truth and has to be queried in some other way to get to the truth! 

I've stuck with Mozilla since the heady days of Netscape but matters like this and the failure for Firefox to retain my preferences when I open a new tab, (Request Desktop Site for example) cause me to use it less and less. 

I want to use it more and more and shall look for changes reflecting my desires in the next version. 

I guess you can close this thread as I'm sure you'll think all is OK. It's not though!

Regards

Chris

Comment 5

[Jan Henning [:JanH]]

Desktop Firefox always keeps private tabs in a separate window - for lack of space there are no really separate windows on Android, but there still are two separate tab lists as the equivalent of a normal and a private browsing window. So while I accept your point of view re the tab counter, I don't think that keeping separate counts is wholly unreasonable, either.

If you disagree about the tab counter, you can file a separate bug for that (and the desktop mode setting belongs in a separate bug, anyway).