220370 - Allow user to select which address book(s) to use for autocompletion (expose existing per-AB pref to include/exclude AB from auto-completing); prevent privacy issues when inactive/undesired addresses are autocompleted

Status: NEW

(Thunderbird :: Address Book, enhancement)

Description

[brian mcgrogan]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.5a) Gecko/20030728 Mozilla Firebird/0.6.1
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.5a) Gecko/20030728 Mozilla Firebird/0.6.1

Currently, in Preferences -> Composition -> Address Autocompletion , it will
pull addresses from either the local address books (all of them), or the LDAP
server... I want to have it pull autocompletion values from one addressbook,
"Personal Addressbook", and not all of them, which include "Collected addresses"
as well... It would be nice to have the option to choose which addressbook to
pull autocompletion addresses from, instead of only allowing all.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
3.

Comment 1

[firefox]

 Confirming this is still a "bug" in version 1.5.0.8 (20061025).

Comment 2

[Onno Garms]

It would be nice to be able to select any number of books, not only one or all.
Unfortunately I have no permission to change "book" to "books" in the summary.

Comment 3

[Steve Simms]

Still true in 2.x.  I've updated the summary per comment #2, though that will make this more challenging to implement.

Comment 4

[hoFFy]

Still there in 3.1
It would be nice to select which address book should be selected first.
In enterprise environment we have the problem that addresses are automatically added to the local address book and auto completion selects the local address books first. In a case where the address changes the user doesn't take notice of the change because he looks at the first address presented to him by auto completion and does not compare the results presented to him from the LDAP.

Comment 5

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

This may or may not end up in Tools > Options ("Preferences" component), but I think it's better to track this in "Address book" component.

Comment 7

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

From duplicate bug 776351:

This could provide a relativly simple and welcome workaround for the design problem that contacts need to be added to an AB to "Allow remote content" (which should be better/additionally realized as a simple list of addresses, I believe we have a bug for that). The bad consequence is that all of those newsletter contacts will show up in autocompletion every time you compose, but chances are you never want to write to them. This bug would allow collecting all those "remote content" contacts in a single AB, and then exclude that AB from autocompletion - nifty workaround given the current design.

Comment 8

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Bug 372443 is a more complex (and more useful) variant (not exactly a dupe) of this Bug 220370:

Bug 372443: *Per-Account* option to select AB(s) for autocomplete (more complex, much more powerful for multiple account setups)

This Bug 220370: *Global* (cross-account) option to select AB(s) for autocomplete (probably easier to implement given the current structure)

Comment 9

[franz.heinz]

In the environment I administrate we have recently had two cases in wich users have accidently sent critical information via eMail to users not belonging to the own company because they didn't realize the Address autocompleted wasn't the one they thought. Since we use different address books for internal and external contacts, this could easily have been prevented by only allowing autocompletion for the internal adress book.
Seen that in one case this has been a serious security issue for the company (because of the content of the message containig critical information about some important infrastructure I don't want to write about here), I would propose to set the status of this problem to some higher priority.

Comment 10

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Albeit technically an enhancement, per comment 9 this is a usability gap big enough to qualify as a major bug as it can cause serious privacy/security issues for setups where collected addresses AB, or archive ABs, or special-purpose ABs etc. need to be maintained inside TB, but should never show up in autocomplete to prevent accidental sending of sensitive information to the wrong people (external, outdated, archived, special-purpose contacts etc.)

Franz, dankeschön thanks for your polite and reasonable comment. I raised importance according to your request. Address book is one of TB's main painpoints a complete redesign has been in the pipe but so far hasn't materialized; it's a big project against the limited volunteer manpower we have since Mozilla radically reduced their manpower commitment. For the same reason, it's hard to tell if somebody will pick this up soon, certainly also depends on how it should be implemented.

Can you please comment on my comment 8?
Is globel cross-account setting for each AB (this bug) enough for your scenario?
Or do you need bug 372443 (per-account setting for each AB)?

Comment 11

[sfhowes]

https://freeshell.de//~kaosmos/morecols-en.html

"possibility to choose, per identity, addressbooks for addresses autocomplete."

Tools/Account Settings/accountname/Composition & Addressing/Addressbooks for addresses autocomplete.

Comment 14

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

As Geoff pointed out, we already have a hidden pref, see my comment on bug 1692960 - so it's probably about exposing that pref with a checkbox

(In reply to Thomas D. (:thomas8) from Bug 1692960 Comment 4)

Hi Thomas Stein,

you're quite right, as we've been having Thunderbird for almost two decades, archiving/obsoleting address books, accounts etc. becomes more pertinent. Unfortunately, I don't think anyone has the free cycles for this enhancement atm, and user interest hasn't been big afasics.

I have just tested the workaround recommended by Geoff and it works perfectly.

(In reply to Geoff Lankow (:darktrojan) from comment #3)

You can do this with the config editor (although it would be nice if there was a better way). Find your address book under ldap_2.servers. and set ldap_2.servers.[whatever].enable_autocomplete to false.

Well, you have to create that pref in the first place...

1. ≡ > Options > Find in Options > about:config
2. Right-click in config editor > New > Boolean
3. Enter preference name: ldap_2.servers.TestAB.enable_autocomplete (if the name of your AB is "TestAB")
4. Enter boolean value: choose false
   ==> TestAB will no longer be used for auto-completion

Comment 16

[Felix Tymcik]

With the last TB update from 91.x to 102 the auto completion stopped working for my DAV address book I keep on Nextcloud.
Only mostly useless "collected addresses" are being used now :(

Comment 17

[Felix Tymcik]

TB 102 on a 2012 MBP 15.4" Retina, OSX Catalina