1526299 - Handle proxy.settings properly in private browsing

Status: NEW

(WebExtensions :: Request Handling, enhancement, P3)

Description

[Shane Caraveo (:mixedpuppy)]

If a user has a proxy extension running that uses proxy.settings upgrades to a version with incognito preffed on, what do we do with the setting? We can remove it, leave it, or give the extension pbm permission.

Comment 1

[Mike Conca [:mconca]]

The bug becomes moot if we allow extensions that are already installed to be granted PBM permission during the upgrade.

Comment 2

[Shane Caraveo (:mixedpuppy)]

(In reply to Mike Conca [:mconca] from comment #1)

The bug becomes moot if we allow extensions that are already installed to be granted PBM permission during the upgrade.

Only for those extensions, not for new profiles, new installs, etc.

For now, the extension will require private permission to use this setting. Filing a bug on netwerk to see about getting support here.

Comment 3

[Mike Conca [:mconca]]

Changing the title a bit. The use case is to make an extension that uses proxy.settings work separately in normal and private windows (similar to what was done for proxy.register and proxy.onRequest).

Comment 4

[David Durst [:ddurst]]

Upping this to P1 to try and get the user experience unbroken when a user needs to set an extension to run in private browsing just to get it working at all (this is currently invisible to the user). Updating bug 1527749 to try and increase that priority as well.

Comment 5

[Shane Caraveo (:mixedpuppy)]

We currently don't allow proxy.settings to be used without private browsing permission. I haven't heard anything from proxy addon authors about it (including secure proxy) so I'm inclined to wontfix this. Bug 1527749 would be needed, and that is probably non-trivial.

marking webext? for team consideration.

Comment 7

[Paul Marks]

Last year I published this Chrome extension for configuring different proxy settings in regular and incognito/private windows:

https://github.com/pmarks-net/incognito-proxy

It installs on Firefox with a small tweak to manifest.json:

- "service_worker": "background.js"
+ "scripts": ["background.js"]

But it's completely nonfunctional:

Failed to read state:
incognito/proxy: not_controllable
incognito/privacy: not_controllable

It would be useful if Firefox either implemented the same API, or something analogous. The idea of automatically routing your Private Browsing traffic through a SOCKS proxy is pretty interesting.