1749535 - Policy needed for Firefox Suggest

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox :: Enterprise Policies, enhancement, P4)

Description

[mmindenhall]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.15; rv:95.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/95.0

Steps to reproduce:

Firefox Suggest introduced in Firefox 93 allows search queries to be sent to Mozilla and processed (and potentially shared with other "partners"). The IT department at my employer views this as a security risk, as they do not want sensitive data entered in the address bar or search bar being uploaded to other companies. I suspect this is in reaction to a published bulletin, so other companies also may be treating Firefox Suggest as a security risk.

Although IT does not want queries sent to Mozilla, they do allow search suggestions from the search engine across browsers (I think their logic is that they can't really disable that altogether, since users can always go directly to the google.com webpage and type a query that would always include search suggestions).

A new policy is needed within "about:policies#documentation", to disable Firefox Suggest enhancements introduced in Firefox 93, while allowing the traditional search suggestions to still be allowed (or disabled separately via the existing SearchSuggestEnabled policy).

I worry that they are going to ban employees from running Firefox if there is not a way to disable this functionality via a policy.

Actual results:

There is no policy within "about:policies#documentation" allowing system administrators to disable the Firefox Suggest enhancements.

Expected results:

A policy should be created within "about:policies#documentation" to allow system administrators to disable the Firefox Suggest enhancements.

Comment 1

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'Firefox::Enterprise Policies' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please revert this change in case you think the bot is wrong.

Comment 2

[Marcela (Please NI request to Brindusa Tot)]

Hi!
Thank you for reporting this improvement. I will change it to New for visibility.

Comment 3

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

These settings can be modified via the Preferences policy.

Suggestions from the web
browser.urlbar.suggest.quicksuggest.nonsponsored

Suggestions from sponsors
browser.urlbar.suggest.quicksuggest.sponsored

Improve the Firefox Suggest experience
browser.urlbar.quicksuggest.dataCollection.enabled

As far as adding a specific policy for this, I'll check into this.

Comment 5

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

Attachment: Bug 1749535 - Add policy for Firefox Suggest. r?standard8

Comment 6

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/3072155b3ba7
Add policy for Firefox Suggest. r=adw

Comment 7

[Iulian Moraru]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/3072155b3ba7

Comment 8

[Mike Kaply [:mkaply]]

Comment on attachment 9349033 [details]
Bug 1749535 - Add policy for Firefox Suggest. r?standard8

ESR Uplift Approval Request

• If this is not a sec:{high,crit} bug, please state case for ESR consideration: Policy only, 118 parity
• User impact if declined: No policy only
• Fix Landed on Version: 118
• Risk to taking this patch: Low
• Why is the change risky/not risky? (and alternatives if risky): Policy only, has test.

Need to grab https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1850578 as well

Comment 9

[Pascal Chevrel (relman team) -> :pascalc]

Comment on attachment 9349033 [details]
Bug 1749535 - Add policy for Firefox Suggest. r?standard8

Approved for ESR 115.3, thanks.

Comment 10

[Pulsebot]

https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-esr115/rev/2369d61995ba

Comment 11

[Pascal Chevrel (relman team) -> :pascalc]

https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-esr115/rev/2369d61995ba