1524789 - Consider the use case of looking for preferences that might have been affected by malware

Status: NEW

(Toolkit :: Preferences, defect, P5)

Description

[:Paolo Amadini]

Florian mentioned this use case in bug 1523028 comment 30: "The common reason for me to look at the whole list of preferences is to look for preferences that might have been affected by malware. I think this is a common case for people using about:config to troubleshoot misbehaving instances of Firefox on other people's computers."

I believe that the right way forward is to ensure that "about:support" (Troubleshooting Information) is all that's needed to identify malware and support this use case, especially when asking other people to provide this information. As mentioned in bug 1502867, directing users to "about:config" to reset or delete preferences until the issue is fixed might have unintended consequences if the wrong preferences are touched.

This might already be the case, hence this is filed as an investigation bug.

Comment 1

[Florian Quèze [:florian]]

Just to clarify, when I said "on other people's computers", I meant someone else's computer, that is currently on the table in front of me and that I'm trying to cleanup, I wasn't talking about helping someone remotely by giving random advice over the phone.