1468318 - Turning the Tracking Protection off in Private Window is and on in normal window Fx remembers it even after a restart

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Private Browsing, defect)

Description

[Bogdan Maris, Desktop Test Engineering]

[Affected versions]:
- Nightly 62.0a1

[Affected platforms]:
- macOS 10.13
- Ubuntu 18.04

[Steps to reproduce]:
1. Open Firefox
2. Click hamburger menu and enable tracking protection in normal window
3. Open Private window and disable tracking protection from hamburger menu
4. Visit about:preferences#privacy and notice the option 'always' selected for blocking known trackers
5. Close Private window and reopen one
6. Notice the status of Tracking protection

[Expected result]:
- Tracking protection is not remembered as off in Private window after closing or restarting Fx

[Actual result]:
- Tracking protection is remembered as off in Private windows even after closing or restarting Fx while 'always' option is still selected for blocking known trackers

[Regression range]:
- Not a regression since its also reproducible on the build where this was introduced, Nightly 2018-06-01

[Additional notes]:
- Here is a screencast showing the issue: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Os8govuxkkrV3ZhWgxqniYGBEvCZw1m3 (the screencast was made on ubuntu, .mp4 file and it would not work if I would have added it to bugzilla directly).
- This scenario isn't described in the specs so I took a wild guess of what I would have expected to function.

Comment 1

[Johann Hofmann [:johannh]]

Yes, this is an edge case we talked about (and why we originally wanted to change about:preferences), but I don't think there's a perfect way to solve it at this point.

Two things we could do:

- If TP is enabled globally, the main menu toggle in a private window could affect the global setting. This is a little bad because it makes the behavior of the toggle inconsistent.

- We could disable the toggle in private windows if TP is enabled globally. This sounds bad because users lose the ability to use it, but in the end using it right now wouldn't give them any benefit either.

Otherwise we probably have to WONTFIX this bug.

Bryan, Stephen, do you have any thoughts?

Comment 2

[Liz Henry (:lizzard) (relman/hg->git project)]

Keeping an eye on this, is there any decision about whether this should affect shipping the feature in 62?

Comment 3

[Johann Hofmann [:johannh]]

Tanvi, any thoughts on this? Is this a WONTFIX?

Comment 4

[bbell]

we're no longer shipping a TP switch in 62 (AFAIK) and the design for Content Blocking is slightly different, so I think this is a wontfix

Comment 5

[Johann Hofmann [:johannh]]

(In reply to bbell from comment #4)
> we're no longer shipping a TP switch in 62 (AFAIK) and the design for
> Content Blocking is slightly different, so I think this is a wontfix

We haven't definitely decided on this, there's a patch to pref it off ready for uplift, though. I'll needinfo Peter so that we can make a decision on this before I go on PTO.

Comment 6

[Tanvi Vyas[:tanvi]]

Is this bug that the toggle doesn't work for Private Mode?  I'm a little unclear.

Comment 7

[Liz Henry (:lizzard) (relman/hg->git project)]

Which Peter are you intending to n-i? 
Josh can you help find an owner for this issue? Thanks!

Comment 8

[Johann Hofmann [:johannh]]

I think the consensus is that this is a WONTFIX for 62 and the problem will not exist in 63. Bryan, Peter, Tanvi, please correct me if I'm wrong.