1580657 - Samsung Internet cannot connect to Firefox Accounts where the primary email address has been changed

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: Firefox Accounts, defect)

Description

[Archimedes529]

Attachment: Screenshot_20190911-194713_Samsung Internet.jpg

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; Android 9; SAMSUNG SM-N970U) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) SamsungBrowser/10.1 Chrome/71.0.3578.99 Mobile Safari/537.36

Steps to reproduce:

• I changed primary email of my Firefox account.
• I signed out from the account section of the settings on my Galaxy phone.
• It only tells me "Failed to sign in. Try again." every time that I try to sync again, even after changing my password, clearing the cache, resetting the settings and getting a new phone.

Actual results:

I cannot sync my Firefox account with my Galaxy phone in the account section of the phone's settings.

Expected results:

I should have been able to actually sign in.

Comment 1

[Ryan Kelly [:rfkelly]]

SamsungBrowser

I believe this is a bug in the native sign-in code for Samsung SBrowser - the Firefox Accounts login protocol involves some special handling for accounts that have changed primary email address, and as far as I know SBrowser does not implement support for that.

Unfortunately, there is not much we can do to fix this on the Firefox Accounts side; you will need to seek support from Samsung on this issue.

Comment 2

[Ryan Kelly [:rfkelly]]

I believe this is a bug in the native sign-in code for Samsung SBrowser

Just to check my assumptions here - are you in fact able to sign in to this account successfully on the web via https://accounts.firefox.com?

Comment 3

[Archimedes529]

(In reply to Ryan Kelly [:rfkelly] from comment #2)

I believe this is a bug in the native sign-in code for Samsung SBrowser

Just to check my assumptions here - are you in fact able to sign in to this account successfully on the web via https://accounts.firefox.com?

I am able to login in Samsung Internet with not trouble. The only place where I have trouble signing in is in "Settings > Accounts and backup > Accounts > Add account > Firefox account", within my phone's settings.

(I even double-checked, logging out and back in in said browser.)

Comment 4

[Ryan Kelly [:rfkelly]]

I am able to login in Samsung Internet with not trouble.

Just to clarify, do you mean here that you can sign in to a webpage loaded in the Samsung Internet browser?

"Settings > Accounts and backup > Accounts > Add account > Firefox account",

I believe this is also provided by the Samsung Internet browser. Do you have any Firefox-branded mobile browsers installed on this device, or just Samsung Internet?

Comment 5

[Archimedes529]

(In reply to Ryan Kelly [:rfkelly] from comment #4)

Just to clarify, do you mean here that you can sign in to a webpage loaded in the Samsung Internet browser?
Indeed, I can sign in to the webpage within Samsung Internet.

I believe this is also provided by the Samsung Internet browser.
I know that when it was set up before it allowed my desktop Firefox to sync up with Samsung Internet on my phone.

Do you have any Firefox-branded mobile browsers installed on this device, or just Samsung Internet?
I don't at the moment. I don't mind downloading another browser if there's something you wish to test.

Comment 6

[Archimedes529]

(In reply to Archimedes529 from comment #5)

Just to clarify, do you mean here that you can sign in to a webpage loaded in the Samsung Internet browser?

Indeed, I can sign in to the webpage within Samsung Internet.

I believe this is also provided by the Samsung Internet browser.

I do know that when it was set up before it allowed my desktop Firefox to sync up with Samsung Internet on my phone.

Do you have any Firefox-branded mobile browsers installed on this device, or just Samsung Internet?

I don't at the moment. I don't mind downloading another browser if there's something you wish to test.

(I'm sorry for poor formatting. I'm not used to it.)

Comment 7

[Ryan Kelly [:rfkelly]]

I don't at the moment. I don't mind downloading another browser if there's something you wish to test.

I don't have anything to suggest unfortunately, I just wanted to confirm that the "Add account > Firefox account" feature is indeed the one provided by Samsung Internet.

I'm sorry to say, I think this is a bug with the account feature offered with Samsung Internet application (it can't correctly sign in to accounts that have changed their primary email address) which we're not in a position to fix.

One possible workaround would be to delete your current account and create a new one with the desired email address, since I believe this bug only affects accounts where you have changed the primary email address.

Comment 8

[Archimedes529]

If that's the case, then how am I able to sign in just fine within the browser itself?

Comment 9

[Ryan Kelly [:rfkelly]]

Within the browser itself, you're signing in to a webpage using code that's controlled by Mozilla. We're able to keep this code up-to-date to handle things like changing primary email address.

In the account settings menu, you're signing in to a native application that's published by Samsung. So it's totally different code that talks directly to the Firefox Accounts backend servers, and which doesn't have support for accounts that have changed their primary email address.

Comment 10

[Archimedes529]

I have spoken to Samsung's support via Twitter, and they seemed to be of minimal help. In the event that having talked to them went nowhere, would it be possible for Mozilla to reach out to them about the issue?

Comment 11

[Ryan Kelly [:rfkelly]]

The contact person I've worked with previously at Samsung does not appear to be active in Bugzilla any more, but I'll make some inquiries internally and see if we have any other contact points. ni? myself for followup.

Comment 12

[Ryan Kelly [:rfkelly]]

(I'm moving this bug under Fennec/FxA, not because I think we can fix it there, but because IIRC that's where the code used by SBrowser originally came from, and I don't have a better place to put it...)

Comment 13

[Archimedes529]

(In reply to Ryan Kelly [:rfkelly] from comment #12)

(I'm moving this bug under Fennec/FxA, not because I think we can fix it there, but because IIRC that's where the code used by SBrowser originally came from, and I don't have a better place to put it...)

Alright, thank you for your assistance in this matter.

Comment 14

[Stefan Arentz | :st3fan | ⏰ EST | he/him]

WONTFIX because this is not a Fennec bug.

Comment 15

[Ryan Kelly [:rfkelly]]

I'll make some inquiries internally and see if we have any other contact points.

Sorry, I have not succeeded in finding anyone internally who can help us reach out to Samsung here.

Comment 16

[Archimedes529]

(In reply to Ryan Kelly [:rfkelly] from comment #15)

Sorry, I have not succeeded in finding anyone internally who can help us reach out to Samsung here.

I've ended up just making a new Firefox account, this time with the intention of never changing the primary email. Thanks for your help.