1433494 - "How to stop Firefox making Automatic Connections" kb article is incomplete

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(support.mozilla.org :: Knowledge Base Content, task)

Description

[Mike Hoye [:mhoye]]

Carrying over from 1432248 - the "How to stop Firefox making Automatic Connections" article here:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-stop-firefox-making-automatic-connections

is incomplete, and could stand to be updated.

Comment 1

[Alice Wyman]

Joni, See bug 1432248 comment 4 for a summary of what content needs updating.

Comment 2

[Mason]

In addition to my test of the documentation with Firefox 58, which I shared in the 1432248, I just tried again with ESR, as I suspected that the documentation may have been written for an older version of Firefox.

FF52 has two of the about:config values referred to in the documentation that are missing in FF58:

browser.selfsupport.url
browser.casting.enabled

but it is still missing

media.gmp-gmpopenh264.enabled

and like with FF58 the about:preferences settings referred to are not where the documentation says they are. After completing the steps that I could, rebooting, and starting/closing Firefox, I did not at first glance see any outgoing connections. I'll have to test a little more thoroughly though, as it's harder to prove a negative than a positive. However, it seems that while the documentation is accurate for neither 52 nor 58, some of the changes not reflected in the documentation took place between 52 and 58.

Comment 3

[u596779]

My test with FF52 ESR in ticket #1424781 showed background communication regardless of the additional (supposedly even more restricting) settings applied.

Comment 4

[Alice Wyman]

There's currently a revision pending to add a new section for captive portals. See https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-stop-firefox-making-automatic-connections/revision/156915 by jscher2000. 

detectportal.firefox.com is one of the connections mentioned in bug 1432248 comment 4 but other changes are still needed.  Joni, can you review?

Related discussion:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-stop-firefox-making-automatic-connections/discuss/7435 [Jan 2018] Missing or incomplete content (bug 1433494, 1432248)
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-stop-firefox-making-automatic-connections/discuss/7456 Can somebody approve (or fix) my revision of 12 Feb?

Comment 5

[jscher2000]

Joni:

(In reply to Alice Wyman from comment #4)
> There's currently a revision pending to add a new section for captive
> portals. See
> https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-stop-firefox-making-automatic-
> connections/revision/156915 by jscher2000. 
> 
> detectportal.firefox.com is one of the connections mentioned in bug 1432248
> comment 4 but other changes are still needed.  Joni, can you review?
> 
> Related discussion:
> https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-stop-firefox-making-automatic-
> connections/discuss/7435 [Jan 2018] Missing or incomplete content (bug
> 1433494, 1432248)
> https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-stop-firefox-making-automatic-
> connections/discuss/7456 Can somebody approve (or fix) my revision of 12 Feb?

Are we making the perfect the enemy of the good here by waiting for some unspecified thing to happen before we can edit this article?

Comment 6

[Alice Wyman]

(In reply to jscher2000 from comment #5) 
> Are we making the perfect the enemy of the good here by waiting for some
> unspecified thing to happen before we can edit this article?
I reviewed your Feb 12, 2018 revision to https://support.mozilla.org/kb/how-stop-firefox-making-automatic-connections and approved it.  I'll leave it to another reviewer to make it ready for localization.

Comment 7

[Seburo]

Closed as per https://blog.mozilla.org/sumo/2019/06/07/sumo-platform-roadmap/