1495979 - Cookie section in Control Center should only appear when something is actually blocked

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Site Identity, enhancement)

Description

[Tanvi Vyas[:tanvi]]

tl;dr;
Block third party tracking cookies
Visit a page with no third party tracking cookies, but trackers are detected on the page.
Should the Control Center have a Cookies section?



In Firefox 63, we agreed to show the global setting in Control Center for Tracking Protection, Fastblock, and Third Party Cookies.  But in Firefox 64, we intended to change that so that we only showed TP/Fastblock/Third Party Cookies in the Control Center when we observed a tracker on the TP list, a slow tracker, or third party (tracking or regular) cookies.

So if you have third party tracking cookies blocked and you visit a page that has no third party tracking cookies, the Control Center shouldn't have a Cookies section.

This doesn't appear to be the behavior in Firefox 64.  The Control Center still appears to show the global setting instead of only showing when third party cookies are detected.  This only happens when there are also trackers from the Disconnect detected on the page.

For example, go to twitter.com when you are not signed in.  Refresh multiple times (since sometimes a double click cookie is set, and sometimes it isn't).  Observe the webconsole to see if tracking cookies are blocked.  When there are no tracking cookies blocked, the control center still shows the global blocked setting for cookies.  Instead, it shouldn't show the cookies item, since no third party tracking cookies were detected.

Another example, is actually our UI tour.  But this will be undergoing changes shortly (see bug 1495671) https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/63.0/tracking-protection/start/?step=1&newtab=true&variation=1.

There were bugs that landed in 63 to create the notifications - bug 1487093, bug 1487331, and bug 1487390.  But I'm not sure we are consuming that information for Control Center in Firefox 64.

We also have to consider what to show when third party cookies aren't globally blocked.  Do we only show "Add Blocking..." when a tracker attempts to set read/write a cookie, or is the presence of a tracker enough here to assume that third party tracking cookies exist?  In the examples cited, there was a tracker but no associated tracking cookies.

Comment 1

[Tanvi Vyas[:tanvi]]

Also, something to consider - what do we want to show in Control Center if third party (non-tracking) cookies are detected and no other trackers are detected on a page?  We probably don't want to show "Blockable content detected" and an "Add Blocking..." option.

Comment 2

[Tanvi Vyas[:tanvi]]

This may be a duplicate of https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1491453.

Comment 3

[(no longer active)]

This should probably be closed with the new design of the control centre for 65.

Comment 4

[Johann Hofmann [:johannh]]

I agree.