1500957 - Improve the address autofill update doorhanger to indicate what changed

Status: NEW

(Toolkit :: Form Autofill, enhancement, P3)

Description

[klmitch]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Fedora; Linux x86_64; rv:62.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/62.0

Steps to reproduce:

Fill out the FTC's do-not-call list complaint form


Actual results:

Because the FTC form is split into two pages and asks for my phone number on the first page, and the scammer's phone number and my address on the second page, Firefox tries to create or update my existing address with the scammer's phone number.  It at least pops up a dialog box, but the box doesn't provide enough information to evaluate the two actions it provides, and there is no explicit button to click to say, "Ignore".  Also, despite me having no recollection of selecting either of the buttons in the dialog box, very occasionally, I find my address auto-fill information has been updated with an additional entry listing a scammer's phone number; I've taken to reviewing my address autofill from time to time to make sure to weed these out.  (I can't say 100% I didn't click a button in the dialog box, I just don't have a memory of having done so.)


Expected results:

The pop-up box should have a way to preview the changes it would make for an "update"—a link that pops up a more detailed dialog box would be fine—and there should be a button to press to explicitly ignore the suggested update/create.

Comment 1

[Timea Cernea [:tbabos][inactive]]

Hi klmitch,

Tried out to either Update or Create the autofill information. In both cases, the behavior was as expected, it created a new address information with the "scammers" phone or updated the previous one that was used to fill in the field in the form. I also checked if there are any changes going on without selecting any of the options and I didn't find anything weird.

Can you please create a new profile on the latest Firefox version and re-test this scenario? Just to be sure that it does not update the phone number without your consent. 

Here is how to create a new profile: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Creating_a_new_Firefox_profile_on_Windows

Looking forward for your results,
Thanks!

Comment 2

[klmitch]

I'm not sure what you're asking me to do, or perhaps more accurately, why you're asking me to do that.  It sounds like you've duplicated the behavior I complained about; my intention in making this bug report was to ask for additional information in the dialog to help understand what change Firefox was wishing to make, and an explicit button to say, "do nothing".

Comment 3

[Timea Cernea [:tbabos][inactive]]

My concern came from this affirmation: 

"Also, despite me having no recollection of selecting either of the buttons in the dialog box, very occasionally, I find my address auto-fill information has been updated with an additional entry listing a scammer's phone number; I've taken to reviewing my address autofill from time to time to make sure to weed these out.  (I can't say 100% I didn't click a button in the dialog box, I just don't have a memory of having done so.)"

In which case I wondered if the scammer's phone was automatically updated without waiting for the user's choice from the dialog. That's why I would want to double check if you can confirm that behavior (the phone number of the scammer is automatically updated) or not.  

Otherwise, I will mark this issue as an enhancement for the developers to review it.

Hopefully, this made it more understandable, please ask for any further information or if there is anything unclear.

Comment 4

[klmitch]

Ah, right; I waffled on whether to include that particular statement.  As I say, I can't confirm 100% that that occurred in any particular case, and if it does occur, it's at a frequency of something like 1 out of 20 or more; pretty frustrating for bug smashing :)  I suggest marking this as an enhancement, as you comment, and revisiting the potential buggy behavior of adding additional entries without confirmation from the user if others happen to complain about it.

Comment 5

[Timea Cernea [:tbabos][inactive]]

Thank you klmitch, will mark this as an enhancement for now and will see if anyone else encounters the behavior you mentioned and investigate further.

Comment 6

[Susan Linton]

when my firefox browser was updated there is no longer an auto fill under privacy and security. How do I get it back?

Comment 7

[Matthew N. [:MattN]]

(In reply to Susan Linton from comment #6)
> when my firefox browser was updated there is no longer an auto fill under
> privacy and security. How do I get it back?

That is off-topic to this bug report and better for https://support.mozilla.org Check about:support#sandbox to make sure en-US is "Default Locale" and check if browser.search.region is "US". If you're in a different region/country then it's not supported.

Comment 8

[Matthew N. [:MattN]]

Hi klmitch, we only prompt when the changes to the autofilled data cause a conflict, not when we are only adding information to an address so that's what you're seeing. That logic probably needs to be smarter.

i.e. it's intentional that we update (a) saved address(es) sometimes without a prompt. It's just maybe not desired in this case.

What's important to know is which fields have the autofill yellow background when the problem happens and what records you had before the merge.

Btw. which issue do you want this bug to focus on as we shouldn't combine multiple into one bug? The preview issues or the auto-merging on the FTC form?

Thanks

Comment 9

[klmitch]

As stated previously, the purpose of this bug report was to request an enhancement to the dialog to provide more information and to provide an explicit button to say, "do nothing".  As for which fields had the autofill yellow background: The name and address fields had the yellow background, while the phone number—as the form is not asking for _my_ phone number—does not.  What's happening is that Firefox is trying to update my phone number with the scammer's phone number—which is obviously suboptimal—but the dialog does not indicate the details of the update, so there's no way for me to know what it's wanting to do.

Comment 10

[Matthew N. [:MattN]]

OK, thanks

Comment 11

[klmitch]

For the record, I just experienced the behavior where Firefox added incorrect phone number information without prompting me, duplicating the existing record.  The situation was that I had made multiple complaints in one session with the FTC form; on the second complaint, my address information was pre-filled out by the FTC form.  When I submitted the second complaint, I noticed I was not prompted as I usually am, and so went to check, and sure enough there was a duplicate entry, with the phone number from the second complaint I had filed, rather than my actual phone number.

Comment 12

[klmitch]

(And no fields in the form had the yellow background on the second go-around…)