1473189 - Tracking protection in Private Browsing mode ignores any user overrides done in normal mode

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: Protections UI, enhancement, P3)

Description

[François Marier [:francois]]

Attachment: permanent-tp-overrides-privatebrowsing.patch

While we should not remember any user overrides added while in Private Browsing mode, we should honor any overrides that a user has added while in normal mode. Otherwise there's no way to have a permanent override that will work in both modes.

The fix is trivial.

Comment 1

[François Marier [:francois]]

Attachment: tp-doorhanger-privatebrowsing.png

While the attached patch fixes the problem, the doorhanger UI is confused about the current state of the page and doesn't offer a way to remove the user override.

I think that the "Enable For This Site" button should be visible here just like in normal mode.

Comment 2

[François Marier [:francois]]

Johann and Tanvi, should we fix this as part of the UI revamp?

I've always assumed that user overrides worked like this, but apparently they have never worked right.

Comment 3

[Johann Hofmann [:johannh]]

Yeah, let's do it!

Comment 4

[Tanvi Vyas[:tanvi]]

We should document the consequences of this.

* Issue: Honoring regular mode settings in private mode could leak that the user has visited this page in regular mode.

This seems pretty minor.

* Issue: The user may not want disabled protection in private mode; they may enter private mode for a more private experience and expect TP to be on, regardless of their normal mode exception.

We don't know what the user expects without user testing.  And this is probably too specific a scenario to do a user test on.

Adding Luke and Francis, but I would be okay to proceed with this change to honor regular mode exceptions in Private Mode.

Comment 5

[Tanvi Vyas[:tanvi]]

Also, when someone picks up this bug, they should consider what happens when a user "enables protection" in private mode on a domain where protection was disabled in normal mode.

Scenario:
You go to twitter.com in normal mode. Disable protection. Then you go to private mode twitter.com. When you go to private mode, protection will still be disabled. Then if the user wants to enable protection on twitter in private mode, they need to click the enable protection button.  What is the behavior of that button?  Will it enable protection just in private mode, or normal mode too?

We should also consider if the button text for enable protection in private mode should change.